,o 




Old "^ 



Oouzatne 



^Jiana of Jooltiezd 



OU "S, 



oazaiae^ 



^ke Js>ife and dSldtory 
of the 
c/amoud Gkatedtix 
of ^t. 



tance 



by / 

Sometime Scholar of Wadham College, Oxford 




VOL. II. 



%e<v HJozk 

1(^00 



0^ 



\\ 






^ 



X^^ 



'01 



(oontentd 



CHAPTER XIII 

CHENONCEAUX. FROM THE REIGN OF 
DIANE DE POITIERS TO THE PRESENT 
DAY 

PAGE 

A Day with the Court of Henry II. at Chenonceaux — 
Death of Henry II. at a Tournament — Catherine de 
Medicis turns out Diana and builds a new Wing on 
the Bridge across the Cher — Fetes at Chenonceaux 
after the Massacre of Amboise — Visit of Marie 
Stuart to Francis II. — Fetes in 1565 and 1577 — The 
" Woman-King " — The Maids of Honour — Louise 
de Lorraine — Her Gentleness and her Grief — The 
Vendome Family — The " Roi des Halles " — Made- 
moiselle d'Enghien — Madame Dupin and the Ency- 
clopaedists — George Sand — M. Wilson — Madame 
Pelouze — The Credit Foncier 9 



CHAPTER XIV 

TWO QUEENS OF FRANCE. MARIE STUART 
AT THE FRENCH COURT, AND SOME 
FACTS ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICIS 

Leading Men and Women in the Sixteenth Century — 
Childhood and Youth of Marie Stuart — Her Face — 
Her Accomplishments — Her Regret at leaving France 
— Poems in her Memory — Catherine de Medicis com- 
pared with contemporary Queens — The " Apolo- 
1 



(oontentd 



getic " School of Historians — Her Youth and Mar- 
riage — Relations with Diane de Poitiers — Her char- 
acteristic Methods — The " Escadron Volant " — The 
Guises — Details of her Life from the Venetian Am- 
bassadors — Amboise Vassy and St. Bartholemew — 
Walsingham and Coligny — Death of Catherine at 
Blois 29 



CHAPTER XV 

AMBOISE: ITS EARLY HISTORY 

Alaric and Clovis — The Chapel of St. Hubert — The 
" Greniers de Cesar " — Stories of Amboise in an old 
Latin History — King Arthur — The Counts of Anjou 
— Louis XL — The Order of St. Michael — The old 
Mystery Plays- — Education of Charles VIII. at Am- 
boise — His Death — Arms and Armour at Amboise in 
1499 {note) — Reign of Louis XII. — The Marechal de 
Gie — Rivalry with Georges d'Amboise — Quarrel with 
Anne de Bretagne — His Integrity and unjust Trial — 
Youth of Frangois d'Angouleme (Francis I.) at Am- 
boise — His Mother, Louise de Savoie, and his Sister, 
Marguerite — His Playfellows — Their Games — News 
of Marignano — The Grave of Leonardo da Vinci — 
Francis I. and French Art 49 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE, AND THE 
REIGN OF FRANCIS II. 

The Beginnings of the Reformation — Parties in the 
Court and in France — Catherine de Medicis — Mur- 
der of Antoine Minard — Burning of Du Bourg — 
Huguenot Cause championed by the Princes of the 
Blood — Politics and Religion — La Renaudie and the 



(oontentd 



PAGE 



First Assembly at Nantes — Conde the " Chef Muet " 
— Extraordinary Spread of the Movement — The 
Court leaves Blois for Amboise — Preparations of the 
Huguenots — Treachery of the Guises — Death of La 
Renaudie — Wholesale Slaughters in the Forest — 
Death of Chancellor Olivier — Horrible Scenes in the 
Castle — The Balcony above the Scaffold — " Dieu 
nous soit doux et favorable " — Power of the Guises 
— Their Attacks on Conde — The Attempted Coup 
d'Etat at Orleans — Death of Francis H. — Subse- 
quent History of the Struggle — Fouquet at Ambois 
— Abd-el-Kader — The " Stag's Head and Branches " 
which John Evelyn saw — Later Restorations — 
Church of St. Denis .79 

CHAPTER XVII 

LA REINE MARGOT. THE REIGN OF 
CHARLES IX. 

Madame de Sauves and the " Escadron Volant " — Visit 
of the Court to Plessis — Beauty of Marguerite — Her 
Passion for Henry, Duke of Guise — Her Marriage 
with Henry of Navarre — Jeanne d'Albret poisoned by 
the perfumed Gloves — Murder of Coligny — The 
Night of St. Bartholomew — Bedroom of Marguerite 
— The Harvest of Death — Bussy d' Amboise — Expedi- 
tion to Flanders — Scenes at Huy and Dinan — Escape 
of Anjou from the Louvre — La Guerre des Amou- 
reux — The Chateau d'Usson — Estimate of Margue- 
rite's Character 105 

CHAPTER XVIII 

HISTORY OF THE CHATEAU OF BLOIS TILL 
THE DEATH OF LOUIS XII. 

The Restorations — Description of the Buildings — The 
Wing of Francis I. — The open Staircase and Carv- 



Gontentd 



PAGE 



ings — Times of the old Counts of Blois and Cham- 
pagne — Louis d'Orleans and Valentine Visconti — 
The Library — Joan of Arc — Charles d'Orleans the 
Poet — Birth and Education of his Son — Louis XIL 
and Caesar Borgia at Blois — Career of Caesar Borgia 
^Robert de la Marche — Visit of Archduke Philip of 
Austria — Anne de Bretagne at Blois — Her Death . 129 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE DRAMA OF THE SIXTEENTH CEN- 
TURY AT BLOIS 

Favourite Home of Claude, Wife of Francis I. — Made- 
leine de France betrothed to James V. — Her Page, 
Ronsard — The Rise of the Classical School of Poetry 
— First French Tragedy — Claude Haton — The Cab- 
inet of Catherine de Medicis — The Apartments in the 
Wing of Francis I. — The Court of Marie Stuart and 
Francis II. — Sudden Journey to Amboise — The Hu- 
guenots — Jeanne d'Albret — Marguerite de Valois and 
Henry of Navarre — Reign of Henry III. — He de- 
clares himself Head of the Catholic League — The 
First Estates at Blois — The Mignons — The Second 
Estates at Blois in 1588— The Court in the Chateau 
— ^The Murder of Henry, Duke of Guise . . .161 



CHAPTER XX 

LATER HISTORY OF BLOIS 

Marie de Medicis, Widow of Henry IV., escapes from 
Blois— Gaston d'Orleans and " La grande Mademoi- 
selle "—Visit of John Evelyn— Louis XIV. at Blois 
—Effects of History on Arthur Young — Chateau de- 
faced by the Revolution — Barracks in 1871— Churches 
and Houses in the Town IQI 



6, 



ontentd 



CHAPTER XXI 

CHAMBORD, THE PARODY OF THE OLD FEU- 
DAL CASTLES 

PAGE 

The Desolation of its Park — Extraordinary Transitional 
Character of its Architecture — Enormous Extent of 
the Building — The Double Staircase — The old For- 
tress changed by Francis into a Hunting-Seat — His 
Distich on the Window — Visit of Charles IX. — Louis 
XHL and Mademoiselle de Hautefort — Marion de 
Lorme — Gaston and his Daughter — Performance of 
Moliere's Pourceaugnac and Bourgeois Gentil-. 
homme — Stanislas Leczinski — Marshal Saxe — His 
Life and Death — Damage done by the Revolution — 
Paul Louis Courier's Pamphlets — The " Folic d'Hon- 
neur " of Henry V 203 



CHAPTER XXH 

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, THE PERFECT FRENCH 
RENAISSANCE CHATEAU. 

Architecture of the Building — Its Pictures — Its Stair- 
case — The Chateau du Souvenir 225 



CHAPTER XXHI 

TOURS AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. THE CAS- 
TLES OF THE FRONDE 

The Chateaux of Cheverny and Beauregard — Their Pict- 
ures — The Chateaux of Romorantin, Montrichard, 
Montresor, Montbazon — Couzieres — Story of Marie 
de Rohan and the Abbe de Ranee — Luynes — Cinq 
Mars — Richelieu — Rochecorbon — Marmoutier — 
Plessis-lez-Tours — House of Tristan I'Hermite — The 



& 



ontentd 

PAGE 

Town of Tours — Silk Industry in 1546 — Receptions of 
Charles IX. and Henry III. — Association of Print- 
ers — Meeting of Henry of Navarre and Henry III, 
at Plessis — Fighting with Leaguers at St. Sym- 
phorien — Escape of the young Prince de Joinville — 
Edict of Nantes — The Huguenots — Revocation of the 
Edict — Visit of John Evelyn — Visit of Arthur 
Young — The Revolution on the Loire — War of 1815 — 
War of 1870 — Gambetta — The " Siege " — Conclu- 
sion 235 



APPENDIX 

Itinerary — Lists of MSS., etc., at Tours — Lists of Pict- 
ures in France and England — A further List of 
Authorities — Extracts (on French Art and Architect- 
ure) from Sir Frederick Leighton's Speech to the 
Royal Academy Students in December 1891 . . 259 

Index 295 



Jo>ut of QjliuMrationd 

Photogravures by Elson & Co., Boston 

PAGE 

Diana of Poitiers Frontispiece 

Marie Stuart 34 

Catherine de Medicis . . . . . .46 

From a portrait in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, artist u7tknoiv7t. 

The Doorway of Chapel at Amboise ... 54 

The Chapel at Amboise 70 

General View of Amboise, showing the Gallery 
from which the court watched the exe- 
CUTION OF THE Huguenots .... 94 

Exterior of Spiral Staircase at Blois, in Wing 

OF Francis 1 132 

Central Pillar of Francis I. Staircase, Blois . 140 

Chateau of Blois, Wing of Francis I. . . 154 

Fireplace in Chateau of Blois .... 164 

Hall of States-General, Blois .... 178 

Henry, Due de Guise 190 

7 



8 Joidt of cJlludtzationd 



The ChSteau of Chambord . 

The Lantern, Chateau of Chambord 

The Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau . 



Marie de Medicis .... 

From a portrait in Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 

Map of the Valley of the Loire 



PAGE 
208 

222 
228 
244 



at etid 



a 



enonceauoco 



CHAPTER XIII 

CHENONCEAUX (Continued) 

In the gossip with which the pages of Brantome are 
filled, the Court of Henry II. lives for us in all its 
details. We can see the King showing his stables 
to the Emperor's ambassador, and parading the 
young nobles of his suite, " mon autre haras de ces 
pages que j'estime autant que les autres," or taking 
him to see the famous greyhounds whose ancestors 
were brought to Saint Louis from Tartary, and 
those noble white deerhounds which Charles IX. 
would recommend as the only breed for a King to 
take out hunting : we can imagine the day at Court 
which the observant Venetian ambassador de- 
scribes, such as it might often have been at Chenon- 
ceaux. It is early in the day, but the King, who 
rose with the sun, has been for some time closeted 
with De Guise, Vendome, and the Constable talk- 
ing over afifairs of State in his new-fashioned " nar- 
row council." After business come devotions, for 
the King attends regularly at mass, and after devo- 
tions, dinner; and now Henry has done with 

seriousness for the day — though counsellors and 

11 



12 Old %. 



ouzaine 



secretaries are still at work in the great hall of the 
castle — and with Saint Andre by his side he rides 
forth a-hunting in the forest of Amboise. Vieille- 
ville is with them too, talking of affairs at Metz/ or 
asking for the latest fashions in furniture or food at 
his friend's luxurious establishment at Saint Valery; 
and as the sound of the hunters' horns grows fainter 
in the distance, and the western sun glows on the 
terraced garden, the walks begin to fill with the 
ladies of the Court, in the costumes Cesare Vecellio 
has made familiar — small velvet caps with strings 
of pearls and feathers, wide slashed sleeves and flow- 
ing robes with a long girdle drooping from the 
waist. 

M. Ramus may perhaps be there, disputing with 
the King's doctor, Fernel, on a knotty point in 
mathematics, and little thinking that his cruel end 
shall come in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and 
his mangled corpse be dragged about the streets of 
Paris by bloodthirsty Aristotelians : Jean Daurat 
helps the argument with a Greek quotation, and 
speaks of the promise of his pupil Ronsard with his 
fellow-countryman Muret, who shall put much 
sound learning into Montaigne's head. Amyot, 

1 See Bertrand de Salignac for the account of the operations 
of Claude de Lorraine, Due de Guise, at Metz, and for much 
further information see Vieilleville's own Memoires. 



eii 



enonceaux 13 



too, has left the Dauphin at his studies to have a 
word with Estienne about some new edition of the 
classics, or to tell the others to prepare their pretty 
speeches for Diana, who is just strolling across the 
drawbridge. This is her first appearance in public, 
but she has been up long before the rest and ridden 
early through the dewy fields in the cold morning 
air, then gone to bed again,^ and in a graceful dis- 
habille transacted what might come of business, or 
listened to the latest sonnet from the poets of the 
Court; and now she appears at last, fresh and pro- 
vokingly attractive, ready to stand comparison with 
the fairest ladies about her, and to throw more 
energy and life than all the rest into her quiet greet- 
ing of the King as he comes back from hunting. 

It is the Queen's turn now. She has felt some- 
what neglected between the invincible Diana and 
this new prodigy from Scotland, who has turned 
the heads of all the courtiers in France; but the 
King and all his gentlemen move gaily towards the 
rooms of Catherine de Medicis, where, among the 
fascinating smiles and dances of the famous " esca- 
dron volant," the day is finished unconcernedly, and 

1 She allowed herself the luxury of a warming-pan, for 
which we have the authority of M. Nestor Roqueplan, in whose 
collection that privileged instrument reposes in good com- 
pany, side by side with the warming-pans of Marie Stuart and 
Catherine de Medicis. 



u did "Go 



uzatne 



the long halberds of the archers of the guard begin 
to glisten in the moonlight as they go their rounds, 
clad in trunk hose and striped tunics broidered with 
the royal cipher. And so Chenonceaux falls into a 
graceful slumber. Let Diana sleep sound while she 
can, for the awakening is to be rude enough : the 
first shock came very unexpectedly. 

In 1559, at the fetes in celebration of the mar- 
riage of Alva and the Princess Elizabeth, the King 
had organized a tournament with great magnifi- 
cence, forgetful of the evil omen with which his 
reign began, amid similar scenes of ill-considered 
splendour. Always a good horseman, Henry in- 
sisted on a bout with the young Comte de Lorges, 
son of Montgomery of the Scottish Guard. The 
trumpets ceased as they started, Vieilleville tells 
us, " which gave us the first trembling presage of 
the ill that was to happen; " they met and broke 
their lances, when, as they parted, the King was 
seen to sway forward in his saddle — the splinters of 
De Lorges' lance had entered his eye beneath the 
visor of his helmet. He was carried out fainting, 
lingered unconscious for four days, and only recov- 
ered to hand over the government formally to 
Catherine de Medicis, and then die.^ 

1 See the details in Vieilleville of the experiments made (upon 
the heads of criminals) by the doctors to try and discover the 



6h 



enonceaux 15 



With the King's death came the favourite's dis- 
grace. Diana was turned out of Chenonceaux by 
the Regent Catherine, and given Chaumont in ex- 
change; but it never consoled her for her double 
grief, and she went to Anet for the rest of her life, 
where Goujon's statue might remind her of the 
royal love that she had lost. 

The distinguishing marks of Catherine's strange 
character soon became apparent in her life at Che- 
nonceaux. She had a mania for building, and to 
her is due the long gallery, raised upon the arches 
of De I'Orme, which is perhaps the least happy of 
the additions to the original chateau; she had, too, 
with all the bloodthirsty temperament of her race 
and her antecedents, the true Medici love for fetes 
and extravagant revels in this western home, that 
might have recalled to her the festivals of her child- 
hood on the Arno.^ 

It was not long before one of these great fetes 
began. The Court at Amboise had requested a 
change of atmosphere, for the consequences of a 
long and persistent massacre of heretics are less 

injury to the King's eye. Dumas describes the accident in 
Les Deux Dianes. 

1 Touraine is a country of strange and varied habitations ; if 
the holes and caverns at Rochecorbon and Saumur suggested 
Troglodytes, there is in Chenonceaux an equal resemblance to 
the lake-dwellings of an earlier age. 



16 did "s. 



ouzatne 



pleasant to the well-conducted mind than the en- 
couraging spectacle of executions still in progress, 
so Catherine took advantage of her opportunity and 
prepared a magnificent reception for the young 
King and Queen in her new home. 

The Court, as we may suppose, had ridden 
straight southwards from St. Denis hors, and into 
the main road by the river at La Croix : a little 
farther on and they were at the turning to their 
right, which is the beginning of the main drive of 
the castle. 

At the foot of every tree stood knots of women in 
their holiday attire, wearing great broad-brimmed 
rustic hats and waving many-coloured ribands, 
while their husbands and brothers with flags flying 
and drums beating made a brave show upon the 
little hill at the entrance to the park : ^ at the end 
of the long drive before the great court, the royal 

1 See a very rare little book, Les Triomphes faicts a I'entree de 
Francoys II. et de Marye Stuart au chasteau de Chenonceaiix le 
Dymanche, Dernier Jour de Mars (o.s.), (which was published 
at Tours in small 4to, reprinted by Techener in 1857), probably 
written by one Antoine le Plessis-Richelieu, Captain of the 
King's Guards at Amboise. Mezeray describing the conspiracy 
of Amboise says: " On donna la commandement des Mousque- 
taires a Cheval a Antoine du Plessis Richelieu, Gentilhomme 
Poitevin, tout avoue a la maison de Guise." He was called 
" le Moine " because he had given up Holy Orders for the 
military profession. His eldest brother, Louis, was ancestor of 
the famous Cardinal. 



&k 



enonceaux 17 



pair passed beneath a tall triumphal arch reared on 
four pillars wreathed with ivy, and inscribed " to 
the Divine Francis," with graceful reference to the 
seditions lately crushed. Farther on, past a great 
double fountain, stood two pyramids with Greek 
inscriptions, the one referring in a brazen way to 
the utility of a good conscience, the other praising 
the wakeful habits of Homeric counsellors.^ 

By now the King was crossing to the higher ter- 
race by a bridge, beneath which countless fish were 
playing, much to the amusement of the suite, and 
on the terrace was a great tower, built with many 
holes, with a bright light within that shone through 
many-coloured glasses. As he entered the castle 
an infinity of " fuzees, grenades, et petardes " went 
ofif in streams of fire, and " the delighted company 
heard at the same time the roar of thirty cannons 
ranged upon the quay, which filled the air with 
echoes for a long time." The evening was too 
young yet for all the company to go indoors, and 
they strolled through the gardens to see the column 
raised by Primaticcio," " on which was placed a 

1 " Nous avons ete contrains," says Guillaume Bourgeat, the 
printer of this account at Tours, " d'imprimer les vers greques 
en caracteres latins, d'autant que n'avions nuls caracteres grecs, 
ce que nous aurons de brief, Dieu aidant." 

2 We can imagine Primaticcio's pleasure at being given the 
preference over Philibert de TOrme, his rival, after some years 
of disfavour. 

Vol. II.— 2 



18 did "(5. 



ouzaine 



great golden head of Medusa, with parted lips and 
hair enlaced with snakes," by which was apparently 
conveyed that " the prudence and wisdom of 
Minerva accompanied the Queen that day." More 
columns rose in every corner, crowned with mo- 
rions and arms, and bearing graceful references in 
weak distichs to the grief of the Queen-mother; and 
all the while more and more fireworks went up and 
fell hissing into the Cher, " so that the very water 
seemed to burn." Amid the echoes of the last 
triumphant burst of welcome on the terrace the 
company moved back past more triumphal arches, 
and naiads pouring " vin clairet " from their hospita- 
ble urns, to the entrance gate, where a Pallas, ad- 
vancing from the balcony above, rained down a 
shower of flowers and leaves, inscribed with sonnets 
to the King and Queen. The very trees for many 
mornings after were vocal with rhyming tablets of 
more or less ill-written greeting. 

It is pleasant to think that Marie Stuart must have 
spent some of the happiest months of her troubled 
life at Chenonceaux, with the young King, about 
this time. All Catherine's fetes had not so fair an 
excuse. After a reception given to her son the 
King, Charles IX., in 1565, in the same grounds, 
she came here again to meet her favourite son, the 
Due d'Anjou, who had gone to Chinon after the 



Gfienonceaux 19 

marriage of Henry of Navarre and Marguerite, and 
here she heard of Henry's victory of Montcontour, 
and wished to change the castle's name to " Bonne 
Nouvelle," without success. In 1577 there was 
fresh triumph at the Huguenot defeat at Charite- 
sur-Loire, which had already been celebrated by 
extravagant orgies at Plessis-lez-Tours; but Cath- 
erine determined to outshine them all, and the 
pleasant fields of Chenonceaux lent themselves 
more readily to festivals than the somewhat som- 
bre castle of Louis XI, with all its grim associa- 
tions. 

The King appeared dressed as a woman,^ with 
" Master Love " under his arm, no doubt barking at 
Chicot, and with his " mignons " round him in such 
enormous rufifs, that " their heads," says the chroni- 
cler, " looked like the head of John the Baptist on 
a charger." 

The Queen was there with her daughter Mar- 
guerite, and the gentle Louise de Lorraine, and all 



1 " Si qu'au premier abord chacun estoit en peine 

S'il voyoit un roy-femme, ou bien un homme-re3me. " 

See Pierre de I'Estoile, Journal de Henri HI. 

Anthropologists may have noticed a " survival " of these ex- 
traordinary freaks of costume in the peculiar fondness of the 
Bank Holiday revellers of to-day for an interchange of their 
masculine headgear with the more alluring ornaments of their 
female friends. 



20 did % 



outaine 



the flying squadron of her maids of honour, with 
what little dress they had in flattering imitation of 
the costume which their masculine admirers had 
similarly exchanged for petticoats. Brantome 
gives the list of all these lively ladies: Mesde- 
moiselles de Rohan, de Saint Andre, Davila with 
stories of the siege of Cyprus, two sisters Gabrielle 
and Diane d'Estrees, Madame de Sauve, of whom 
we shall hear more at Blois, and many others. 
" Tout y estoit en bel ordre," says I'Estoile, so we 
leave them, with as little scandal as we may, to have 
their revel out. 

Some ten years afterwards the central figure of 
the fete was dead. Catherine had passed away at 
Blois, and Henry had been murdered. One of the 
most unnoticed of the whole throng at the festi- 
vals of Catherine came back to Chenonceaux and 
brought a great change with her. Louise de Lor- 
raine, of the great house of the Guises, was of very 
dififerent mould from the wicked little Duchesse de 
Montpensier, or any of her proud relations — a weak, 
pure soul, who spent her life in prayer for her worth- 
less husband, and " stayed where she was," alone 
with her grief and without the comfort of children 
to help her bear its burden. The creditors of Cath- 
erine de Medicis had carried off all that was porta- 
ble of the work of Bernard Palissy or the sculptures 



6li 



enonceaux 21 



of the Italians/ and the first days of Louise were 
busied in arranging her own " meubles, bijoux et 
livres," of which the catalogue has been preserved 
by Prince Galitzin. Among the books was a de- 
scription by M. Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx (printed 
in 1582) of the appearance of Louise at the mar- 
riage fetes of the Due de Joyeuse. This quiet, pure 
woman, in the midst of a licentious Court, had a 
beauty of her own that shrank from the light of 
criticism in an outspoken time, and passed easily 
unnoticed among the rest. It is to the Venetian 
ambassador, as usual, that we must look for a deli- 
cate appreciation of her character and worth. " She 
is full of a sweet simplicity," says Girolamo Lippo- 
mano, " which nothing disturbs save the presence 
of her lord the King, upon whom her eyes are 
always fixed. Her face is pale and somewhat thin, 
but she has brilliant eyes and light hair over a pure 
brow and slight features." 

At Chenonceaux she stayed for eleven years, 
vainly demanding justice from Henry IV.; but the 
King could not do much; he had but little income 
either, to bestow on her; but it was not much she 
spent upon herself. One day when she was Queen, 
she had only a hundred crowns in the world, and 

1 See Les Archives de Chenonceaux, published by M. I'Abbe 
Chevalier, from the original MSS. 



22 did ^, 



outaine 



gave them all to a messenger who brought good 
tidings; and now her small income served her to 
continue her charity to the famiHes of the poor on 
the estate. A monument of her care for poor pris- 
oners still survives in her benefactions to several 
Paris prisons. 

During the war she writes to the King, who some- 
times came to visit her himself, that the Sieur de 
Rosny was trampling over all her ground with his 
horses, to the great detriment of the good people 
of the country, " que je vous prie vous souvenir, 
Monsieur, qu'ils me sont vassaulz et tenus pour moi 
comme enfants tres afifectionez." 

So, between weeping and caring for her tenants, 
her sad life wears to its end. Visitors come to her 
occasionally — Marguerite de Valois, or the King 
with Gabrielle d'Estrees, but none of them satisfies 
her sense of injustice and her bitter grief. In 1601 
she died in the Chateau de Moulins. 

Chenonceaux now passed into the hands of the 
Duchesse de Mercoeur and the Vendome family, 
and here, while Richelieu was controlling the des- 
tinies of France, and the Three Musketeers were 
quarrelling with his Eminence's guards, Gaston 
d'Orleans was entertained at supper while the gay 
Due de Beaufort,^ in despair at all attempts to make 

1 Known in Paris at the time as the " Roi des Halles." 



(?A 



enonceaux 23 



her father see a joke, turned to try conversation 
with his daughter, " la grande Mademoiselle " ; 
here, in 1650, came Mazarin to be reconciled with 
the Due de Vendome; and shortly after, the foot- 
steps of Anne of Austria, with her son, Louis XIV., 
were heard in the gallery which had seen so many 
beauties, but few so royal and so fair. A trace of 
this visit was left at Versailles, where some statues 
taken from Chenonceaux were sent to grace the 
royal gardens. 

The last Due de Vendome connected with the 
chateau was famous for his ugliness, and when very 
old, and still uglier if possible than before, he mar- 
ried an extremely plain grand-daughter of the great 
Conde. Mademoiselle d'Enghien, being unable 
even in the country to get rid of some of her old 
habits, was so unfortunate as to drink herself to 
death. 

The romance of Chenonceaux seemed in danger 
of being utterly crushed, when a fresh reign began 
with the new attractions of the literary Madame 
Dupin, to whom the place was sold in 1733 by the 
Due de Bourbon, not without great legal disputes, 
in which the whole process of Diane de Poitiers' 
elaborate arrangements for possession was brought 
to light again with a new meaning. One La Ferme 
had been appointed in the name of the nation as 



24 did %. 



ouzatne 



proprietor of Chenonceaux, which was thus consid- 
ered to be a Crown domain, and there is no Httle 
irony in the fact of all Diana's schemes, which 
profited herself so little, having been the main in- 
strument in proving the inalienable rights of this 
later owner. 

Even the debts of Catherine de Medicis came up 
for discussion, and it was only when the last of the 
descendants of her host of creditors had been proved 
satisfied that M. Claude Dupin, the Fermier-Gen- 
eral, a second Bohier in fact, came to Chenonceaux. 

This new proprietor was a friend of Montesquieu 
and gathered in his wife's salons the most famous 
literary celebrities of the day. It was a different 
kind of life from any that had yet been seen in Che- 
nonceaux. Madame Dupin had a certain intelligent 
little secretary, who actually had the temerity to fall 
in love with her, and be gently enough reproved; 
it is Jean Jacques Rousseau, who shall become the 
great man of the company later on. Bernis is there, 
and Buffon, and Voltaire, and unhappy-looking 
Diderot, with all the Encyclopaedists in his train, ex- 
horting poor Jean Jacques to " continue virtuous, 
for the state of those who have ceased to be so makes 
me shudder." 

The great Revolution, which owed no little to 
these last visitors to the chateau, spared its beauty 



eh 



enonceaux 25 



from the ruin with which it visited so many more 
illustrious and more noted noble houses. The 
grand-nephew of Madame Dupin, Rene, Comte de 
Villeneuve, died here in 1863, after the castle had 
had yet another literary visit, from George Sand; 
and the last memories of Chenonceaux hark back 
again to Scotland with its latest owners, M. Pelouze 
and his wife Madame Wilson, a relative of that 
Daniel Wilson from Glasgow who in 1789 was 
Under-Secretary of State to the Minister of Finance 
in France, and whose descendant has but lately 
gained a somewhat unenviable notoriety in French 
politics. The wire of his telephone to Paris still 
hangs in the gallery of the chateau. 

By Madame Pelouze much was done to restore 
the ancient glories of Chenonceaux, which had been 
somewhat dimmed by the neglect of the Vendomes, 
but the traditional financial embarrassments which 
seem to have hung about the place ever since the 
bankruptcy of the Marques, its first owners, have 
unfortunately reappeared; the enormous sums spent 
in decoration, and the splendid fetes that recalled 
the galas of the sixteenth century, resulted in the 
arrival of the creditors again, though for less sums 
than in the days of Catherine de Medicis. 

The chateau is now in the hands of the Credit 
Foncier, who charge their visitors a franc a head — 



26 Old Oowcaine 

" sic transit gloria " — but much of the beauty and 
all the interest of Chenonceaux still remain. As we 
left it we saw a solitary swan that floated in the moat; 
her white breast cut the mirrored image of the walls, 
and reminded us strangely of the old times that had 
passed from them. And indeed the traveller will 
find much that is worthy of a longer visit here than 
his guide will probably allow him in this home of 
beautiful women and gigantic debts. He will not 
be impressed as by the solid masonry and bulk of 
Chambord or Langeais, but neither will he be left 
with the sense of a somewhat too respectable and 
comfortless blank of tradition and association; he 
may not find here all the history that seems incrusted 
on the very stones of Blois, but he will not see the 
blood of Guises on the floors : the charm of the place 
is a more domestic one; the very attempts at forti- 
fication only add to its picturesqueness, and are 
obviously only meant to do so. It seems built 
especially for the enjoyment of the brilliant Court 
favourites who so often were its inmates, and to re- 
flect, in the exuberant fancy and brightness of its 
architecture, the gaieties which were meant to be 
habitual within its walls. 

The rich decorations of the rooms of Francis I., 
the windows of the boudoir from which Diane de 
Poitiers watched for the coming of her royal lover, 



&h 



enonceaux 27 



the pictured faces all along the great gallery upon 
whose ceiling the light from the waves of the Cher 
dances in strange flickering fragments, all will im- 
press him with a sense of beauty, and will leave him 
with a pleasant memory. At Amboise he will see 
the dark side of the picture, and watch the next act 
of the drama at the Court of Francis II. and Marie 
Stuart. 



Ovoo ,,^eend of cfzancey 



CHAPTER XIV 

TWO QUEENS OF FRANCE 

" La nef qui disjoint nos amours 
N'a eu de moi que la moitie, 

Une part te reste, elle est la tienne, 
Je la fie a ton amitie, 

Pour que de I'autre il te souvienne." 

The scene in French history in which the children 

of Catherine de Medicis played the leading parts, 

and which ended in the capitulation of Paris to 

Henry IV., begins with the reign of Francis II. 

All the principal characters of the drama either 

appear, or are in the near distance. Catherine de 

Medicis, the Queen-mother, and the young Queen, 

Marie Stuart, will be seen first and most clearly; of 

Marguerite de Valois we shall hear more later on, 

as of Jeanne d'Albret, Madame de Montpensier, and 

the lovely Madame de Sauves, Marquise de Noir- 

moutier. 

The reign of Diane de Poitiers was the beginning 

of an influence upon the highest issues of French 

politics, of women with far less self-control, with 

even less scrupulousness, than Henry's favourite — 

31 



32 Old ^owcairie 

an influence mainly Italian in its origin, as has been 
noticed, and to which was due all the misery and 
bloodshed which the unbridled passions of such 
women could not but cause. 

Of the men, there appear at this time the first 
generation of the Guises, the Duke Francois and the 
Cardinal de Lorraine, powerful with their niece 
upon the throne of France, the forerunners of the 
famous Henri de Guise and the second Cardinal; 
Anne de Montmorency, the Constable, is here too, 
with his nephews the Chatillons; Antoine of Na- 
varre, father of " le bon Bearnais " ; the first Prince 
of Conde; De I'Hopital, Harley, and De Thou; — 
these make up the more important actors in the 
drama that is to follow. And upon the scenes, or 
waiting for their turn, are the maids of honour of 
Catherine de Medicis, the " mignons " of the future 
Henry HI.; Besme and Coconnas, the murderers of 
St. Bartholomew; the grim perfumer of the Queen- 
mother, Poltrot, Jacques Clement, and Ravaillac. 
The literary men stand off from such forbidding 
company: Ronsard, Montaigne, and Estienne Jo- 
delle, with Beauvais, tutor to the young Prince of 
Navarre, and many more, are hovering about the 
Court. 

Let us look closer at some of these as they throng 
to the Louvre, where Catherine and the Guises are 



c'wo c^jieend of cFtance 33 

staying up the young King for his first attempt at 
royalty. With the Constable, who is talking to 
Conde and the King of Navarre, are his nephews, 
Admiral Coligny and the Colonel d'Andelot, watch- 
ing the clear, keen face of the Cardinal de Guise, 
with its quick, cat-like eye and the strange hard 
turn at the corners of his lip, half hidden in the fair 
hair of the beard; beside him is his brother, the 
brave Captain Francois, gray of tint and thin in 
face and body, with light grayish hair, " figure 
d'aventurier, de parvenu qui voudra parvenir tou- 
jours " ; in the midst is the little King with his pale 
puffed face and flat nose,^ between the Scotch- 
woman and the Florentine, whose strong, intelHgent 
head, the true muzzle of the Medicis, becomes all 
but bestial in the prominent mouth and underhang- 
ing jowl of later life; but on the other side, in 
contrast to the pale Italian, is the lovely Marie, for 
whose love this half-grown King, distracted at the 
gift of so much beauty, was to exhaust his feeble 
strength and die; for never was there charmer of 
more power than Marie Stuart. Fortunately we are 
only concerned with her life in France, and with the 

1 " II avait le nez fort camus," says Louis Regnier de la 
Planche in a passage in which the various weaknesses of the 
sickly Francis are detailed. Anne the Constable was known as 
" le camus de Montmorency," from his flat nose. 
Vol. II.— 3 



34 Old Oowcaine 

later years so fruitful in controversy of her 
chequered career in Scotland, we have nothing 
to do. 

King James of Scotland had married the daughter 
of Claude de Lorraine, Due de Guise, and from the 
troubles of a country constantly at variance with 
England, their daughter Marie escaped when quite 
young to the shelter of the French Court. There 
we hear of her first in 1554, at a fete in the gardens 
of St. Germain, where she appeared by the side of 
the pretty Miss Fleming. Authentic portraits of 
her a few years later show her with the auburn- 
tinted hair and the fine transparent skin of the paint- 
ing at Azay-le-Rideau, the complexion she shared 
with her uncle the Cardinal, and the quick, light eye 
of brownish tinge that could be hard and fixed at 
will; but her youthful beauty, which was undenia- 
ble at this time at any rate, was the least among her 
charms. " Showing an astonishing acquaintance," 
says Michelet, " with books, affairs, and men, well 
versed in politics at ten, and mistress of the French 
Court at fifteen, she ruled everything by her word, 
by the charm of her presence, which troubled every 
heart. In this wonder, whom the Guises brought to 
France, every human gift was united save self-con- 
trol and tact; fantastic and visionary, for all her 
keenness in intrigue, for all her seeming cunning 



(yfbazie (Stuart 



Owo ..^eend of cFtance 35 

and finesse, she ended by falling into every snare 
her enemies spread for her." ^ 

Yet during the few months of her power in 
France, a power that has been too little recognised, 
no one could escape her influence, the Queen- 
mother no more than the rest. A little court of 
poets gathered round her, Du Bellay and De Maison 
Fleur ^ among them, whose verses were answered 
with her own, and gave yet another charm to such 
memories as those of Chenonceaux. She left 
France with the sorrow of her young dead husband 
in her heart, and the sweet verses of her favourite 
Ronsard in her memory, verses in which for once 
the poet forgot to be classical and gave utterance 
to a natural beauty of pathos and expression, but 
too rare in his writings. 

1 It is interesting to note French opinion on her character 
from another point of view. 

" L'ennemie la plus intime," says Balzac, " et la plus habile 
de Catherine de Medicis etait sa belle-fille la reine Marie, petite 
blonde, malicieuse comme une soubrette, here comme une Stu- 
art qui portait trois couronnes, instruite comme un vieux 
savant, espiegle comme une pensionnaire de convent, amou- 
reuse de son mari comme une courtisane Test de son amant, 
devouee a ses oncles qu'elle admirait, et heureuse de voir le 
roi Frangois partager, elle y aidant, la bonne opinion qu'elle 
avait d'eux." — Etudes Philosophiques sur Catherine de Medicis, 
p. 90. 

2 Not so well known as his companions ; he was a Huguenot 
writer of some celebrity in his time, author of Les Divins 
C antiques, Anvers, 1580. 



36 ULd Oowcatne 

" Adieu," she cries, upon the deck of the ship that 
bore her from Calais. " Adieu done, ma chere 
France, je ne vous verrai jamais plus." The words 
of Beranger are too true — 

" Adieu, charmant pays de France, 
Que je dois tant cherir; 
Berceau de mon heureuse enfance, 
Adieu, te quitter c'est mourir." 

She left a country where she was always regretted, 
and which kept a romantic memory of her beauty, a 
tender pity for her sorrows. The Guises could make 
no motion at her death, for they were paralysed by 
the murder of Le Balafre, but the French Court had 
done its utmost to save the victim of its plots with 
Scotland, and the whole country felt the compas- 
sion for her misfortunes, which makes Brantome's 
account rise above the ordinary level of a gossiping 
Court chronicle. 

" This Queen," says Giovanni Correro eight years 
afterwards, " while she kept the love of her honour 
and the fear of God before her eyes, reigned in a 
most admirable manner, so that all the world won- 
dered to see a young girl, so delicately nurtured and 
so little used to government, able to resist the influ- 
ences against her. The Pope especially favoured 
her, sending her encouragement with words and 



uwo ^ueend of atance 37 

money. But her joy was short-lived; at one blow 
she lost her husband, her freedom, and her crown." 

" Tout ce qui est de beau ne se garde longtemps," 

sings Ronsard, 

" Les roses at les lis ne regnent qu'un printemps, 
Ainsi vostre beaute, seulement apparue 
Quinze ou seize ans en France est soudain disparue." ^ 

She left France and the intrigues of the decaying 
dynasty of the Valois for a rude atmosphere where 
stronger wills than hers were paramount, and where 
she had no longer strength to fight against ne- 
cessity.^ 

Of very different mould is the woman standing 
near her by the King's chair. It becomes necessary 
to have a clear idea of the character which dominates 
the next thirty years of French history, and who, in 
1533, left the intrigues of Italy, to contaminate the 
French Court. 

1 Malherbe's improvement on these lines ran as follows : — 

" Elle etait de ce monde oh les plus belles choses 
Ont le pire destin ; 
Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses 
L'espace d'un matin." 

2 " L'Angleterre impie," cries Dumas, " ce bourreau fatal de 
tout ce que la France eut de divin, tua avec elle la grace, 
comme elle avait deja tue Tinspiration en Jeanne d'Arc, 
comme elle devait tuer en Napoleon le genie." 



38 Old Ooutalne 

About Catherine de Medicis at least, there can be 
no doubt as to the verdict, and even the brilliant 
attempt of Balzac cannot change the judgment of 
posterity on one of the most infamous women who 
ever held the royal power. 

The present school of historical criticism, if it de- 
lights in destroying old ideals, has shown itself no 
less skilful at whitewashing characters hitherto con- 
demned without appeal; and in many cases a fairer 
estimate of results has been arrived at; but difBcult 
as it is to accept even a modified picture of the vil- 
lainies of a Louis XI,, it becomes impossible to 
acquiesce in the strained attempt after originality 
and paradox, which becomes obvious in any apology 
for Catherine; nor will the well-worn argument of 
the dangers of her situation or the habits of her time 
suffice to clear her character. Such arguments 
might have been used in her favour, were her acts, 
her policy, and her influence other than they are — 
in the face of results they become absolutely untena- 
ble. Nor is it merely a wholesale feeling of dis- 
gust at the tendencies and methods of the age, that 
leads us unequivocally to condemn one of its chief 
personages. Of the three Queens of that time it 
was given to but one to succeed, and in her success 
to build up the greatness of the English nation. 
The unhappy fate of Marie Stuart has procured a 



^wo ^ueend of azatice 39 

pardon for her faults, the death of Catherine de 
Medicis was welcomed as a release from an ever- 
present evil, as the beginning of an attempt to bet- 
ter things. The lives of Coligny, of Jeanne d'Al- 
bret, of Henry of Navarre, of Michel de I'Hopital, 
show that even in the sixteenth century it was possi- 
ble to fulfil many duties, many obligations, without 
the stain of lying or of murder/ 

When first Catherine came to the Court to marry 
the young Dauphin, with her caressing manners 
and her Spanish etiquette, Diane de Poitiers was 

1 Of contemporary authorities perhaps the most severe 
criticism is the Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et de- 
portemens de la reine Catherine de Medicis, attributed to Beze, 
probably the work of Estienne, and in any case a brilliant piece 
of writing — first published in 1574. D'Aubigne is also on the 
Huguenot side against the Queen. Brantome gives us the 
extreme of all that could be said in her favour by a partisan 
of her Court. In De Castelnau, Tavannes, De Bordenaye, and 
the Memoires of Marguerite de Valois, there is also much to 
be gathered. The Venetian ambassadors in France at this 
time, when Venice was still powerful enough to be fearless in 
judging other nations when she wished, have a feeling of hon- 
esty and strength behind them, that gives great value to their 
impartial judgments, while their artistic sensibility gives a 
colour and a refinement to their descriptions, very rare in other 
writings. Finally, a large collection of the actual letters of 
the Queen-mother afford a source of information that admits 
of no dispute. Passing over English writers, and omitting the 
Life by Balzac as a brilliant literary paradox, the Catherine 
de Medicis, Mere des Rois, etc., by M. Capefigue, 1856, may 
be taken as an example of the apologetic school in France, 
fortunately not a numerous one. 



40 did "Q. 



owcatne 



pointing out " the siiopkeeper's daughter " to the 
courtiers, and the keen-eyed Venetian ambassador, 
Marino Giustiniano had already noticed the discon- 
tent of the whole nation at the marriage. " Men 
find," he says, " that the Pope (her uncle) has de- 
ceived the King," and the Dauphin himself was no 
better pleased with the match; it was not merely as 
a merchant's daughter,^ not merely as one to whom 
deceit and lying were as habitual as breath, that he 

1 For details of the early life of Catherine see the researches 
of M. Alberi and M. de Remmont, collected from the archives 
at Venice. 

Her descent from the founder of the family is as follows : — 

Giovanni de Medici (d. 1428) . 

Cosmo (Pater Patriae, d. 1464) 
Pietro (d. 1472) 



Lorenzo il Magniiico (d. 1492) Julian 



I Pope Clement VII. 

Alfonsina, daughter = Pietro the Unfortunate 

of Orsino, 
Constable of France 

Lorenzo, Due d'Urbino (d. 1519) = Magdalena, daughter of Jean 

Ide la Tour, Comte of 
Boulogne and Auvergne 

Henry II. of France = Catherine de Medici (1519-1589). 

It is curious to note that Catherine was distantly related to 
both her rivals at the French Court — to Marie Stuart through 
the Duke of Albany, son of James III. and Anne de la Tour, 
the aunt of Catherine ; to Diane de Poitiers through her father, 
Jean de Poitiers, whose mother, Jeanne de Boulogne, was an 
aunt of Magdalena de la Tour. 

In connection with Catherine's own children the Pope's re- 
mark on leaving her at Marseilles is interesting. " A figlia 
d' inganno non manca mai la figliuolanza." 



^wo ^leend of c/tance 41 

disliked her, but " as some serpent born of tainted 
parents in the charnel-houses of Italy." ^ 

The strange sight of the foreign wife protected 
and befriended by the French mistress, is explained 
by Diana's fear that the throne in default of direct 
heirs would fall to her enemies; and when at last 
a child was born, it was the weak and ill-formed 
Francis, who died before his time, and bequeathed 
the civil wars to France; then came the madman 
Charles IX., with the blood of St. Bartholomew's 
Day upon his hands; then the effeminate Henry, 
weak and spiteful as he was cowardly, who debased 
the country to his own degraded level; and after 
bearing such a brood, the pale, fat-faced Florentine 
grew old and battened on the miseries of France. 
Educated among the faction and intrigue of the 
Italian Republics, when murder was the habitual 
solution of a difficulty, with little knowledge of 
French customs, no prejudices of birth or aristoc- 
racy, as incredulous of good as she was supersti- 
tious and given over to enchantments,^ she only saw 

1 She had no children for ten years. This, say her apolo- 
gists, was more Henry's fault than hers, but the fact remains, 
and I cannot help seeing more truth in Michelet, than in the 
untranslatable explanations of Brantome, Balzac, and the 
others. 

2 See the traces of her cabalistic figures at Chaumont, her 
tower " Uraniae Sacrum " at Blois. " The eccentricities of 
genius," says M. Capefigue. 



42 Old ^outaine 

in France another Florence to be cowed by the old 
mean methods, and in the factions of Guises and 
Chatillons another quarrel to be settled like the 
feuds of Medici and Pazzi. Where it was impossi- 
ble to avail herself of the secrets of Ruggieri, she 
unhesitatingly made every use which a cynical im- 
morality could suggest of the " escadron volant " 
that was always at her orders. The statesman 
whose position saved him from assassination was 
seldom man enough to resist the temptations of an 
intrigue; he was entangled at the critical moment, 
and his opportunity was lost. Antoine de Navarre 
and Conde were only two examples among many 
of the astuteness of the Queen-mother's policy. 
Jeanne d'Albret's letters from Blois show the disgust 
and alarm which were aroused in a good woman 
by contact with this society at Court. ^ 

Crushed and humiliated from her very infancy, 
broken by the contempt of Henry II., at the mercy 
of his mistress, and eclipsed by the young Queen of 

1 M. Capefigue's explanation is worth hearing. By the sweet 
influence of the " escadron volant " the soft airs and graces 
of the Court were to tone down the rough and violent society 
of the time. " Au milieu des plaisirs des fetes et du luxe, 
elle esperait user ces ames ardentes, ces coeurs de fer et de 
feu." After this it is only to be expected that we should find 
that " the Mignons were encouraged to show what a Court 
ought to be," that " Henry of Navarre was coarse compared 
with them," and other extraordinary statements. 



Owo c^^eend of cFtance 43 

Scotland, Catherine seemed to see in the early years 
of Charles IX.'s reign, her first glimpse of the power 
she thirsted for, which had almost escaped her in the 
short life of Francis II. 

But the strength of the Guises soon taught her, at 
Vassy and at Fontainebleau, that her time was not 
yet. " She felt their heavy hand upon her neck and 
bowed her head; her heart fell back again to the 
meanness that was natural to it " : she played the 
good Queen-mother at the Guises' bidding. 

" She never leaves the King," writes Giovanni 
Michiel, who gives some striking details of the life 
of the French Court. " She keeps the seal which 
the King uses, which they call cachet. . . . 
The Queen-mother is very fond of the good things 
of life; her habits are irregular and she eats much, 
but afterwards seeks remedy in strong exercise; she 
walks, rides,^ and is never still; strangest of all, she 
has even been seen out hunting. But in spite of all 
this, her face is always pale and almost of a greenish 
tinge, and she is very fat." Even the Italian am- 
bassadors cannot find much to praise in their com- 
patriot, though they do their best. "As to the 
Queen," says another, Michele Suriano, "it is 

1 " Elle estoit fort bien a cheval et bardie, et s'y tenoit de 
fort bonne grace, ayant este la premiere qui avoit mis la jambe 
sur I'arQon, d'autant que la grace y estoit bien plus belle et 
apparoissante que sur la planchette." — Brantome. 



44 ULd Ooiitaine 

enough to say she is a true Florentine if ever there 
was one, but it is impossible to deny that she is a 
woman of great tact and intellectual vigour." 
Brantome and Davila agree in this last opinion, 
which is perhaps the best that can be said of Cather- 
ine, for even the feelings of maternity which she 
shared in common with the brutes were perverted 
by her superstition and her cruelty, and warped into 
a preference for the least worthy of her sons, the 
miserable Henry, Due d'Anjou. Her son Charles 
had only frightened her whenever he attempted to 
show a will of his own; for Francis she felt too much 
contempt for love; in Henry alone she could see her 
own nature reflected, womanish and Italian, witty, 
heartless and corrupted. 

It is only necessary to peruse the letters she was 
perpetually scribbling ^ at the time to be convinced 
of her true character. Throughout them all is the 
same undercurrent of commercial vulgarity, of plot- 
ting and intrigue, of requests for help for Gondi and 
Bizago, and the rest of her Italian proteges. 

" She does everything a man could do, and yet 
she is scarcely loved," says Correro again naively in 
the reign of Charles IX. " The Huguenots say 
that she deceived them by her fair words and her 

1 " Je la vis une fois, pour une apres disnee, escrire de sa 
main vingt pures lettres et longues." — Brantome, 



Owo c:^eend of a'cance 45 

false air of kindliness, while all the time she was 
plotting their destruction with the Catholic King; 
the Catholics, on the other hand, say that if the 
Queen had not encouraged the Huguenots they 
would not have gone so far." 

" Extremes disgusted her," explains M. Cape- 
figue : " she tried to unite both parties to the 
King." As a matter of fact she played fast and 
loose with one after the other, and the only consis- 
tent motive in the hand-to-mouth policy of her 
whole life was her insatiate ambition for her own 
and for her children's greatness.^ 

It scarcely needed the terrible picture in Dumas' 
Reine Margot, of Catherine ranging like a wolf 
among the dead, for us to imagine how she ruined 
the diseased and excitable nature of her son Charles, 
and drove him slowly mad by hideous plots and 
countless thwartings of his feeble attempts at right- 
eous government. So well recognised had her 
character become that the danger of her friendship 
was a proverb at the Court.^ No one could feel safe 
with a woman who took such obvious delight in 

1 See Martin, Hist. ix. 271. 

2 " Quand elle appelait quelqu'un * mon amy ' c'estoit qu'elle 
I'estimoit sot ou qu'elle estoit en colere," etc. . . . " Je la 
vis une fois . . . tout du long du chemin lire dans un 
parchemin tout un proces verbal que Ton avoit fait de Derdois, 
basque, secretaire favory du Connestable," etc. — Brantonie. 



46 6 Id "lO. 



owcatne 



condemnations and in trials, whose relaxation from 
a satiety of festivals was the sight of organised 
butcheries, which restored her the energies for 
renewed debauchery and dissipation. From the 
revels at Blois she moves to the massacres at Am- 
boise, and completes the round of pleasure with the 
fetes at Chenonceaux : even if her complicity in the 
murders of St. Bartholomew were not completely 
proved, it would be hard to acquit any one who had 
such interest in the death of the Huguenot leaders 
as had Catherine, but it was entirely owing to her 
evil suggestions that the mind of the unhappy King 
was worked up to the pitch of frenzy required to let 
loose the wild fanaticism of Paris, that might even 
still have been restrained. After the massacre she 
triumphantly showed the papers of the murdered 
Admiral Coligny to Walsingham, Elizabeth's am- 
bassador. " Le voila votre ami," she cried, " voyez 
s'il aimait I'Angleterre." — " Madame," replies the 
Englishman, " at least he loved France." ^ And as 
a true lover of his country, as one of the few real 
heroes of that time, Coligny was especially obnox- 

1 Among many contemporary witnesses see La Noue's testi- 
mony to the worth of Coligny in Discours Politiques et Mili- 
taires, xxvi. " Troisiemes Troubles," Bale, 1587, p. 702. 
" Or, si quelqu'un en ces lamentables guerres a grandement 
travaille et du corps et de I'esprit, on peut dire que c'a este 
M. I'Amiral . . . somme, c'etait un personnage digne de 
restituer un Estat affoibly et corrompue." 



(Datliexlne dc Wljedlctd 

cfrom. a poxtxah in the %ffyl gaLiexy, 

cHoxence. Sj^xUM unknown 



O'WO <:^ieend of cFtance 47 

ious to Catherine; and France, which still trembled, 
began at last to see the truth. " She is accused," 
says Giovanni Michiel in 1575, " of every evil that 
has desolated the kingdom; up till this time she was 
but little liked, now she is detested." For thir- 
teen years longer her pale face was at the King's 
shoulder whispering the venom of her counsels to 
his cowardly heart. In the reign of Henry III. at 
Blois we shall meet her again, and there the end 
comes worthily, after her son, who had begun his 
career with the death of the chief of the Protestants, 
had ended it with the murder of the head of the 
Catholic League. Her tricks and schemes are over, 
she is found out at last, and dies beneath the rooms 
where Guise was stabbed to death; her body, which 
found but scant and hasty burial, was left almost 
forgotten, and hurried to its tomb from the Church 
of St. Sauveur. 



Chmbol 



otdey 



CHAPTER XV 

AMBOISE 

" Carolus Octavus primus me erexit in urbem; 

Hunc fontem, Hos muros, Haec mihi templa dedit 
Ambosa." 

Bishop of Arezzo to Piero di Medici, 1493. 

The Castle of Amboise stands high above the town, 
Hke another Acropolis above a smaller Athens; it 
rises upon the only height visible for some distance, 
and is in a commanding position for holding the 
level fields of Touraine*around it, and securing the 
passage of the Loire between Tours and Chaumont, 
which is the next link in the chain that ends at Blois. 

The river at this point is divided in two by an 
island, as is so often the case where the first bridge- 
builders sought to join the wide banks of the Loire, 
and on this little spot between the waters Clovis is 
said to have met Alaric before he overthrew the 
power of the Visigoths in Aquitaine. 

Amboise gains even more from the river than the 
other chateaux of the Loire. The magnificent 
round tower that springs from the end of Charles 
VIIL's facade completely commands the ap- 

51 



52 Old ^ouzaine 

proaches of the bridge, and the extraordinary effect 
of lofty masonry, produced by building on the sum- 
mit of an elevation and carrying the stone courses 
upwards from the lower ground, is here seen at its 
best. 

Through the white houses of the little town that 
cluster round the lofty castle, " like crumbs that 
have fallen from a well-laden table," ^ we passed 
towards the archway which gives entrance to the 
castle from behind, though the " drawbridge, which 
had an invention to let one fall, if not premonished," 
no longer existed. The moats across which Evelyn 
passed in 1644, and which are clearly drawn in 
prints of the sixteenth century,^ no longer exist. A 
winding ascent led us into the gardens, which have 
a special charm of beauty, removed and isolated 
from the common life below, lifted high in the air on 
the great rock of the fortress, and surrounded by its 
towers and terraces. Here we were left to wander 
for a time when we first arrived, and discovered 
alone the lovely little chapel of St. Hubert, with an 

1 Mr. Henry James, op. cit. The few chapters on Touraine 
by this writer are full of picturesque and appreciative touches 
of the impression which the mere exterior of all these chateaux 
leaves upon an artistic visitor; see especially his description 
of Blois {A Little Tour in France). 

2 In the picture of La Renaudie's death, for instance, which 
will be referred to in subsequent pages. 



U^mboide 53 

extraordinary carving above the doorway, repre- 
senting St. Hubert's encounter with the miraculous 
Stag. The building looks very tiny in one corner 
of this vast courtyard, but the charming effect of its 
light buttresses, rising from below and cHnging to 
the great outer walls of rock and brickwork until 
they end in finely chiselled pinnacles that blossom 
from the angles of its roof, is completed by a rich- 
ness and care in the workmanship of the interior 
very rarely surpassed by any monument of its time; 
the inner surface of its walls is a marvel of beautiful 
stone carving fine as lace, and shows up the more as 
it is almost the only work of the kind to be seen at 
Amboise. The chapel was built ^ by Charles VIII. 
after his return from Italy, and was no doubt carved 
by the Italian artists who came with him. There is 
a strangely grotesque figure of an ape above the 
altar, which is mentioned by M. Champfleury 
(Histoire de la Caricature au moyen age) as peculiarly 
distinctive of that period of Italian taste. The 
whole has been restored and strengthened with the 

1 Any one who knows Oxford will remember the carving 
which is above the entrance gate of Merton ; let him imagine 
this inserted above the door of Exeter College Chapel, and the 
whole raised upon steep walls many feet into the air, and he 
will have a faint idea of the chapel at Amboise, which is on 
much the same lines (very much reduced, but in perfect pro- 
portion) as the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, with the same light 
spire. 



64 did ^, 



owcaine 



greatest care and success since 1872 by the architect 
of M. le Comte de Paris, in whose possession the 
castle then was, and it is by his care, too, that the 
beauty of the great towers, built by Charles VIII. 
about the same time, remains in its original condi- 
tion, stripped of the hideous modern erections 
which formerly defaced them. Amboise has not 
always met with such careful treatment; in 1806 a 
certain vandal senator, one Roger Ducos, irrepara- 
bly destroyed a great part of the old buildings to 
avoid the trouble and expense of keeping them in 
proper repair; nor did the war of 1870 spare the 
place entirely, for when the bridge was blown up, 
the excessive quantity of powder employed loosened 
the foundations of several parts of the chateau, and 
almost produced incalculable disaster. 

Little more than the actual rooms and walls built 
by Charles VIII. , with various modern restorations 
that were only necessitated from decay and never 
look incongruous, now remains at Amboise. We 
shall see more of them as we look closer into the 
story of the castle, ana though of the interior there 
is absolutely nothing worth inspection left, the out- 
side walls and terraces have a grandeur all their own 
that compensates for any shortcomings within. 

But Amboise has a history before the days of 
Charles VIIL There was without doubt a Roman 



(?lie tJJootwaif of (pkapel at Ci^mhoi 



016 e 



Ubmbotde 55 

camp here, but the traditions of the ubiquitous 
Caesar must be received with caution/ The so- 
called " Greniers de Cesar," strange, unexplained 
constructions caverned in the soft rock, are proved 
to be the work of a later age by that same indefatiga- 
ble Abbe Chevalier to whom we have been already 
indebted for so much archaeological research. A 
possible explanation of them is contained in an old 
Latin history of the castle, which goes down to the 
death of Stephen of England. According to this,^ 
the Romans had held Amboise from the days of 
Caesar till the reign of Diocletian; the Baugaredi or 
Bagaudae then put them to flight, but let the rest of 
the inhabitants remain, who, " being afraid to live 
above ground, tunnelled beneath it, and made a 

1 The Chronicle written by the monk Jean de Marmoutier in 
the twelfth century says that Caesar on his way back from the 
siege of Bourges was so struck with the strategical position 
of Amboise that he built a tower upon the rock, and raised 
upon the whole a great statue of the god Mars, which fell in 
a miraculous storm raised by St. Martin to abolish the em- 
blems of paganism. Touraine is full of the strangest tradi- 
tions of Julius Csesar. The most amusing instance of such 
stories I have found is the passport gravely asserted to be 
authentic which runs as follows : " Laissez passer le nomme 
Cesar. (Signe) Vercingetorix." 

- " Liber de Compositione Castri Ambacias et ipsius Domi- 
norum Gestis," which is No. 9 in a collection bound together 
called Veterum aliquot Scriptorum qui in Gallics Bibliothecis 
maxine Benedictorum latuerant Spicilegium, torn, x., pub- 
lished in Paris 1671. 



56 Old Ooutaine 

great colony of subterranean dwellings in the holes 
they had dug out," a custom apparently common in 
Touraine from the earliest times, and of which we 
have already noticed several instances. The Ro- 
mans at any rate left unmistakable traces of their 
presence; many of their architectural remains still 
exist, and their fort is spoken of by Sulpicius Sev- 
erus; but they can have built no bridge of stone, 
for in St. Gregory's time there were only boats 
available for the crossing of the river,^ 

One more detail occurs in the Latin chronicler 
which is too attractive to English readers to be 
omitted, in spite of the suspicions somewhat brutally 
expressed in a marginal note by some more modern 
critic. At the time when the Romans had lost all 
hold upon the province, one Maximus, the captain 
of the castle, gave his daughter in marriage to the 
King of Britain, after which it came into possession 
of King Arthur, who gave it back to the Franks 
" before he sailed away to conquer Mordred, and 
was slain in the Isle of Avalon." 

But by the time of Clovis, Amboise begins to 
stand clearly out from the mist of tradition and un- 
certainty, and in the ninth century the great tower, 
which had already become a fortress, was in the 

1 M. Mabille, op. cit. (cap. i.), Bihl. de I'&cole des Chartes, 
Touraine. 



Chmboide 57 

power of the Counts of Anjou, and in 1016 we hear 
of the Angevin captain, Pontlevoy, bringing back 
much plunder from the conquest of Odo of Blois and 
storing it in the great keep of Amboise. 

Not till the fifteenth century did the castle be- 
come royal property, when it was confiscated by 
Charles VII. as a punishment for treacherous deal- 
ings with the invading English very similar to the 
treason discovered at Chenonceaux just before. 
But beyond threatening the fortifications of the 
place this King did Httle for his new possession. 

In a few years the castle is overshadowed by the 
cruel spectre of Louis XI., whose memory has 
already spoilt several charming views for us. It was 
to Amboise that the father of this unfiHal prince was 
carried from Chinon on his way north, when wearied 
out by the annoyance caused by the Dauphin's plots. 
The castle had become a royal residence, and soon 
after the whole town turns out to meet the new King 
with a " moralite que maistre Estienne avait faite 
pour jouer ladite joyeuse venue," for Amboise was 
already famous for those dramatic performances al- 
ways so dear to the French, and particularly to these 
citizens, in the old days at any rate. There is no 
trace of such frivolities now in the sleepy little town. 

Then, " wine was given to all comers to drink at 
the expense of the town," with a wild hospitality 



58 uLd Oomaine 

which told upon the civic treasury somewhat too 
heavily; but they made merry while they could: 
Louis XL was but newly crowned, the whips had 
not yet changed to scorpions. In less than four 
years the actors had thrown away their motley, and, 
clad in what steel they had, were formed into a civic 
guard for the protection of the town. The Duke of 
Burgundy had already begun to show how true he 
was to be to the troublesome traditions of his house, 
and the word " Peronne " had furnished the latest 
jest for Paris, always ready to laugh at a faux pas 
even of its King. 

It was at Amboise that Louis XL instituted the 
Order of St. Michael, that was to rival the dignity 
of the famous Order of the Golden Fleece, and at 
this time the arms of France were first surrounded 
with the chain of cockle-shells that held the figure 
of the Saint conquering Satan.^ A representation of 
a meeting of this Order in August 1469 at Amboise 
occurs in the " Statutes of the Order," dated from 
Plessis-lez-Tours, which is decorated with minia- 
tures, and preserved at Paris. 

But in spite of troubles with Burgundy and taxa- 
tions from the King's council, all brightness was not 
quite gone from the little town, for more Mystery 

1 Travellers who have visited Mont St. Michel will agree 
that the shells from Cancale and that part of the coast quite 
deserve their proud position in the royal escutcheon. 



Ubmbolde 59 

Plays were occasioned by the birth of the future 
Charles VIII., and not many years after Louis made 
his last visit to Amboise to give his son his blessing, 
whatever that might be worth, before retiring to try 
to keep out death by lock and key, by moats and 
man-traps, in his dismal fortress at Plessis-lez- 
Tours. 

During his reign Amboise, both town and castle, 
suffered from the depression that was general 
throughout France; even their Mystery Plays seem 
to have somewhat flagged. Some three hundred 
years of jesting at the Pope and the morality of ab- 
beys had begun to weary; these representations, 
which had begun by being always of a religious 
character, had made a new departure in the Mistere 
du Siege df Orleans, already quoted; yet even here 
there is a whole company of heavenly actors. Be- 
fore this the author could merely change the words 
of Scripture in the mouths of secondary personages 
whose comic interludes produced the only effect 
that gave success, and were the supreme effort of 
contemporary dramatic art; plot there was none, 
only a multiplicity of variety and scene. Rabelais 
tells us of Villon's efforts in this direction, and 
draws several lively pictures of the Comedies and 
Diableries which followed, for which last the town 
of Doue was particularly famous. 



60 Old ^ 



owcaine 



The " Mystery Plays," properly so called, were of 
very early origin, and were possibly an attempt to 
present to all classes a vivid enactment of sacred 
scenes which had not yet become public property 
by the agency of the printing press. The story of 
Daniel, or the parable of the Ten Virgins, became 
much more of a reality to the common people when 
actually thrown into life and action before their eyes, 
than when spelt out with difificulty from a rare manu- 
script, or misunderstood from the readings of some 
ecclesiastic in a foreign tongue. The custom thus 
originated lasted long after the presses of Faust and 
Gutenberg had popularised literature, sacred and 
profane, even after the movement of the Reforma- 
tion had given a French Bible to the nation, and a 
Marot had produced his metrical version of the 
Psalms. But it was not from these that the drama 
of Moliere drew its inspiration, nor from what is 
known as the " profane mystery," a kind of horrible 
parody upon Biblical subjects, but from the " mo- 
ralities," the farces, and " soties," which had their 
origin in the innate dramatic instinct of the French 
people. The farce of Patelin,^ for instance, was a 
very fair reproduction of the manners of the time, 

1 The farce of Patelin was very celebrated in the sixteenth 
century. It was composed between 1467 and 1470. For a 
criticism and analysis of it see Estienne Pasquier, Recherches, 
viii. 59, p. 780 (ed. 1621). 



Chmbolde 61 

and as such it has been already quoted, and indeed 
so great a hold did these representations gain upon 
the public mind that we find such a piece as the 
Farce du Paste et de la Tarte retaining its popularity 
until the days of Louis XIV., when Moliere's com- 
pany took the place of the Comediens de I'Hotel 
de Bourgogne. These last " Comediens " were a 
survival of the old " Confrerie de la Passion," a so- 
ciety of actors who had almost superseded the old 
" Basoche " and the " Enfants sans Souci," by an 
audacious mixture of the old and established Script- 
ural subjects with grotesque or obscene incidents 
which appealed to the grossness of the time, while 
it reflected the chaotic nature of the religious sym- 
pathies and beliefs of men in the thick darkness of 
the Middle Ages. There is in them the same ghastly 
mockery of holiness which disgusts us chiefly in the 
character of Louis XL, as it will sicken us later on 
in Henry IIL The hideous cloak of superstition 
and idolatry which Louis called religion, still more 
perhaps the heartless cruelty of the man in private 
as well as in public relations with his fellow-man, all 
this remained far too clear for us to be long doubtful 
about the sincerity of the joy of Amboise when the 
old cry was heard again, " Le Roi est mort, vive le 
roi." 

For some time the Dauphin had been living at 



62 did %. 



outatne 



Amboise in idleness and seclusion; but the accounts 
of his father's neglect are not to be too hastily be- 
lieved. Louis has quite enough to answer for with- 
out this being laid to his charge unnecessarily, and 
the testimony of Commines on the point is to be 
received with caution. The scene at the castle in 
September 1482, when Louis, just returned from a 
pilgrimage to Saint Claude, and feeling that his end 
was near, solemnly invested his son with the royal 
authority, would seem to show that his neglect of 
Charles has been somewhat exaggerated; but there 
is other evidence, too: the letters of the King to 
Bourre, who had charge of the Prince, are not those 
of a careless and indifferent father, nor would a man 
whose ideas of classical education were limited by 
the sentence " Qui nescit dissimulare nescit reg- 
nare " so highly reward Etienne de Vesc, the other 
tutor. Such a maxim was at any rate not the one 
by which the new King guided his policy; nor was 
his reading, even before he came to the throne, lim- 
ited to the romances of chivalry by which his 
mother's notions of literature were bounded. The 
Grandes Chrotiiques de France and the Rosier des 
Guerres of Pierre Choinet were in his hands soon 
after 1482, and this ignorant prince, who was sup- 
posed to have been suppressed for fear of opposi- 
tion to his father's power, astonishes Europe by an 



Uhmkotde 63 

invasion of Italy as soon as the disturbances of his 
own nobles within the kingdom had been quelled. 

It is well known, too, that his was a mind which 
developed slowly and would bear but little pressure. 
Claude de Seyssel and Commines give the wrong 
reason for the education prescribed for Charles by 
his father. From Nicole Gilles we find what is far 
nearer the truth, that the life of the heir to the throne 
was rightly considered to be of more importance 
than the acuteness of his intellect, and that his 
strength of body was encouraged in preference to 
the risk of enfeebling a naturally weak constitution 
by the enforcement of displeasing studies. " Sa 
mauvaise nourriture," as Commines calls it, " n'en- 
dommagea en rien son genereux naturel brave 
courage qui etait ne avec lui," and when he was 
strong enough to learn he had the will to study. 
The number of classical books which he brought 
back from Italy would alone prove that his tastes in 
this direction had not been neglected; and though 
inevitably much was wanting in his general educa- 
tion, yet the sound advice and firm policy of the 
Regent, Anne de Beaujeu, did much to steer him 
safely through the first troubled years of the reign 
that he began when still a child. 

The young King's return from his campaign in 
Italy, unpleasant enough in its inevitable ill-success, 



64 did %. 



ouzatne 



was still further saddened by the death of his son at 
three years of age, " bel enfant," says Commines, 
" et audacieux en parole; et ne craignant point les 
choses que les autres enfants ont accoutume de 
craindre." This boy was buried with his brother 
in the Church of St. Martin at Tours, and their tomb 
is still one of the most beautiful ornaments of the 
cathedral to which it was removed after the destruc- 
tion of the older church. 

The two great towers of Amboise with the in- 
clined planes of brickwork, which wind upwards in 
the midst instead of staircases, were the result of 
the work which Charles set on foot as a distraction 
to his grief. These strange ascents had been par- 
tially restored by the Comte de Paris, the present 
owner of Amboise, before his exile stopped the work 
of repairing the chateau, and it is still possible to 
imagine the " charrettes, mullets, et litieres," of 
which Du Bellay speaks, mounting from the low 
ground to the chambers above, or the Emperor 
Charles V., in later years, riding up with his royal 
host, Francis L, always fond of display, amid such a 
blaze of flambeaux " that a man might see as clearly 
as at mid-day." 

These great towers and the exquisite little chapel 
were the work of the " excellent sculptors and 
artists from Naples " who, as Commines tells us, 



Ubmbotde 65 

were brought back with the spoils of the Italian 
wars; for the young King " never thought of 
death " but only of collecting round him " all the 
beautiful things which he had seen and which had 
given him pleasure, from France or Italy or Flan- 
ders; " ^ but death came upon him suddenly. At 
the end of a garden walk, fringed with a mossy 
grove of limes that rises from the river bank, is the 
little doorway through which Charles VIII. was 
passing when he hit his head, never a very strong 
one, against the low stone arch, and died a few hours 
afterwards. The castle had been fortified before 
his time; he left it beautiful as well, and the traces 
of his work are those which are most striking at the 
present day.^ 

1 In October and November 1493 he shows off the new build- 
ings with much pride to the Italian ambassadors. See Des- 
jardins, Negot. Diplom. de la F. avec la Toscane, i. 340. 

2 Baron de Cosson has been kind enough to send me a list 
of the arms and armour in the Chateau of Amboise at 1499. 
It will be noticed that the ownership of King Arthur is trace- 
able in the entry referring to Lancelot's sword. " Une dague 
en manchee de licorne la poignee de cristalin nommee la dague 
Saint-Charlemagne. Une espee en manchee de fer, garnie en 
fa^on de clef nommee I'espee de Lancelot du Lac, et dit-on 
qu'elle est fee. Une espee d'armes garnie de fouet blanc et 
au pommeau une Nostre Dame d'un coste et un souleil de 
I'autre, nommee I'espee du Roy Charles VII., appellee la bien- 
aimee. Une espee d'armes, la poignee couverte de fouet blanc 
et au pommeau a une Nostre Dame d'un coste et un S. Michel 
de I'autre, nommee I'espee du Roy de France qui fist armes 

Vol. II.— 5 



66 6Ld %. 



outaine 



The new reign began with the disgraceful process 
of divorce against the first wife of the King, Jeanne 
de France; in the Church of St. Denys it was con- 
firmed publicly, and the papal sanction read. The 
indignation which must have been felt pretty gen- 
erally throughout France was particularly out- 
spoken in Amboise, where the prelates and the- 
ologians of the Court were pointed out in the streets 
as the " Herods and Pilates " of their time. 

It may have been as much a feeling of shame as 
a movement prompted by more delicate associa- 
tions, which prevented Louis from entering the 
town with Anne de Bretagne when she made her 
second entry as Queen of France. Amboise was, 

centre un gean a Paris et le conquist." Various other swords 
are mentioned, such as the Papal one given with the arms of 
Pope Calixtus ; the war-sword of Charles VIII. ; a sword given 
by the King of Scotland to Louis XL when he married Madame 
la Dauphine ; the sword of Louis XL, " nommee la belle espee 
du Roy Louis qu'il avoit a la conqueste qu'il fist premier sur 
les Suysses, nommee Estrefuse " ; a sword " nommee I'espee 
de Philippe le Bel " ; another " nommee I'espee du Roy Je- 
han " ; with others belonging to Louis XL and Charles VIII. 
The sword called " La Victoire " seems to have been made 
for Charles VI. in 1383 (see V. Gay, Glossaire Archeologique, 
Paris, 1887, p. 686). Amongst the armour was, " Une 
brigandine de Tallebot couverte de veloux noir tout usee, et 
sa salade noire couverte d'un houx de broderie fait sur veloux, 
tout usee " ; also, " Harnoys de la pucelle, garny de gardebras, 
d'une paire de mitons, et d'un abillement de teste oti il y a ung 
gorgeray de maille, le bort dore, le dedans garny de satin 
cramoisy, double de mesme." There was besides " une hache 
a une main qui fut au Roy Saint Loys " (see V. Gay, p. 65). 



Ubmboide 67 

as usual, ready with its Mystery Play to welcome 
the new Queen — this time a history of Julius Caesar 
— but the demonstration of loyal and dramatic fer- 
vour was suppressed. 

At this time the Marechal de Gie, whom we 
have met before, begins to take a prominent posi- 
tion. He had accompanied the King on the first 
expedition to Italy, and after his return had been 
moved, by a sudden accident to Louis, to think 
of the marriage of his daughter Claude. Unfortu- 
nately Anne de Bretagne, never a great friend to 
the Marechal, had thought about it too, and hostili- 
ties began between them, on the Queen's side " une 
guerre de coups d'epingle," on the Marechal's 
nothing save a profound and apparent contempt.^ 
De Gie was now given the care of Louise de Savoie, 
Comtesse d'Angouleme, and her children, with a 
small force of men-at-arms in the Castle of Am- 
boise, and by his command in Angers, and his con- 
nections in Saumur and Tours, he was practically 
master of the Loire — a fact which was pecuHarly 
galling to the Queen, for by way of trying, like a 
true Breton, to guarantee her eventual indepen- 
dence, she was in the habit of sending jewels and 
other valuables down the river to safe-keeping at 

1 See Procedures Politiques du regne de Louis XII., M. de 
Maulde, Ecole des Chartes. 



68 Old 'E. 



outatne 



Nantes; but this, though it was to appear again 
later on, was not the chief grievance of which the 
Queen complained, for De Gie had a far higher 
task : he was holding the future Francis I. against 
all other possible heirs whom Anne de Bretagne 
might produce by marrying her daughter to a for- 
eign prince, and his position was made all the more 
difficult by the narrow and suspicious nature of 
Louise de Savoie. 

But between De Gie and D'Amboise was now 
divided the chief power in the kingdom, and he 
soon began definite negotiations for the marriage 
of Francis with the Princess Claude. Anne de 
Bretagne, as we have seen, was actually desirous of 
giving her daughter to the boy who was to become 
Charles V., and the value of De Gie's authority in 
French politics may be estimated by this fact alone 
of spirited opposition to so grave an error. 

Nor were his energies exhausted upon this one 
struggle. He found time to send opportune help 
to the French army that was struggling in Italy, 
and, though fifty-two years of age, to marry Mar- 
guerite d'Armagnac and obtain the title of Due de 
Nemours. It was owing to his exertions, too, that 
a National Infantry, some twenty thousand strong, 
was raised, and when the Cardinal returned in all 
the disappointment of his lost opportunities at 



Obmbolde 69 

Rome, De Gie's position of confident authority in 
France added one more sting to the annoyance of 
his own failures in Italy. 

But the Marechal's well-merited good fortune 
did not last. His son's wife and his own died with- 
in a short interval, and in January 1504 the~ King 
fell suddenly very ill, and was sent to Blois to 
recover in the healing influence of his natal air, as 
Francis was sent later on to Cognac, in accordance 
with a medical superstition for long prevalent in 
France. 

It now became more than ever important to urge 
on the marriage of Francis and the princess, and 
in the opposition that ensued Cardinal d'Amboise 
joined the Queen against De Gie and resolved upon 
his fall, making various accusations as to his un- 
warrantable interference with the Queen's move- 
ments; indeed, just at this time the Marechal had 
seized two boats laden with her furniture and jewels 
between Saumur and Nantes, which were on their 
way westwards to provide a comfortable provision 
for the widowhood which then seemed near at hand. 
Anne was furious, and her anger was increased by 
the betrothal of Francis. She at once instituted 
proceedings against De Gie, but his character and 
probity were too well known for her to succeed. 
But the Queen would not rest without her ven- 



70 Old Ooutaifie 

geance, got up another trial, and condemned him 
at the Court of Toulouse, while D'Amboise looked 
on, and " let justice take its course." 

De Gie, banished from the Court and heavily 
fined, went into an honourable retirement at his 
Chateau of Verger, which recalled in many details 
the home at Blois of the King he had served so 
well. The process which the Queen instituted 
against him proved his justification for all time, and 
purified his memory for ever from the calumnies of 
the Court. He was too honest and too straightfor- 
ward for those with whom he had to come in con- 
tact, and, like Semblanqay afterwards, he had to pay 
the penalty for his integrity. He reorganised the 
army, established a sound defence on the frontiers, 
and invariably opposed the foreign expeditions 
which wasted to so little purpose the resources of 
the kingdom; it is in this that his greatness con- 
sists, for perhaps he was alone of his time in realis- 
ing that the strength of France lay in her natural 
boundaries, and alone in devoting his energies to 
the unity and solidification of his country. 

In 1507, at the engagement of the Princess 
Claude to Francis, then the probable heir to the 
throne, the enthusiastic citizens of Amboise would 
not be denied their usual tribute of congratulation, 
and the Mystere de la Passion was presented with 



(Dne (Dkapel at iSS^inbolae 



(%mholde 71 

so much magnificence that the town accounts were 
in hopeless confusion for a long while afterwards. 

Francis I., whose long nose and slumbrous eye 
look down from the walls of so many chateaux of 
Touraine, has been at Amboise for some time. The 
reader has already been introduced to him in later 
Hfe, and to his sister, the learned Marguerite, who in 
1 501, at the age of nine, was watching her brother, 
two years younger than herself, playing with little 
Fleurange, who had just made his youthful debut at 
Blois, and had been sent on by the King to keep the 
young duke company. They played a rough kind 
of tennis in the level spaces of the garden, using a 
racquet weighted with lead to give more force to 
their blows, or shot with bows and arrows at a white 
mark fixed to a door, or, as the prince's strength 
grew with his age, a new game is introduced from 
Italy, played with enormous hollow balls that were 
struck with a queer instrument of metal covered 
with felt and tied on the arm from wrist to elbow 
with leathern straps; and now, finding that four 
make a better game than two, Francis takes young 
Anne de Montmorency to try conclusions with 
Brion Chabot, who is partner to Robert de la 
Marche. 

Two of the players were to turn their mimic 
rivalry into grim earnest later on, and all were to 



72 ULd Ooutaine 

be famous; perhaps they felt that even now, for 
when the game is over, the little snub nose of " Le 
Camus " may be seen in close proximity to the 
lengthy face of Francis, asking the duke to make 
him Constable some day, when he shall have come 
into his kingdom; while Chabot, not to be left be- 
hind, begs to be Admiral of France in that glorious 
future when they shall help together to regenerate 
the world. Both had their wish, and Montmo- 
rency, the Constable, lived sternly through the next 
four reigns, to die fighting in 1567 at the battle of 
St. Denis. 

With these boys there are others, too, who shall 
be famous in their deaths. Gaston de Foix, who 
died so young at Ravenna; Bonnivet, who was to 
fall in love with the fair sister of his playmate and 
die upon the field of Pavia, where Fleurange, too, 
was taken prisoner, and used his hours of solitude 
to write his Memoires. And watching her son with 
eyes as eager as her daughter's, and even more am- 
bitious, is Louise de Savoie, whose short journal, 
full of this idolised son, gives us many details of his 
life at Amboise. 

In January 1501 she writes: "About two in the 
afternoon my king, my lord, my Cccsar, and my son, 
was run away with across the fields near Amboise 
by a pony which the Marechal de Gie had given 



Obmholde 73 

him; the danger was so great that those present 
considered it past remedy. Nevertheless God, the 
protector of widow women and the defence of or- 
phans, foreseeing the future, would not abandon 
me, knowing that had ill fortune robbed me sud- 
denly of my love I should have been too unhappy." 

This journal, which is the barest chronicle of 
facts and dates, the narrow record of a mean char- 
acter, never rises into pretentious diction but when 
speaking of this boy on whom her whole soul rested. 
The strong young prince was soon to leave the 
castle, where his impetuous nature had often fright- 
ened others besides his anxious mother. One day 
he let a wild boar loose within the court, which 
rushed madly at the flying servants, and finally 
made for the great staircase, where Francis was 
waiting and killed it with his dagger. 

Soon after, Louise writes : " Mon fils partit 
d'Amboise pour etre homme de cour et me laissa 
toute seule " — there is all a mother's pathos in these 
short words; but the diary still contains references 
to his visits to the castle; once when on his way to 
Guienne against the Spaniards in 15 12, and three 
years later when he rides over from Chaumont with 
a thorn in his leg, " from which," writes his mother, 
" he had much pain, and I too." 

Then after some terrible sidehghts upon the jeal- 



74 did % 



outatfie 



ousy between the Savoyard and the Breton woman, 
comes " the triumphant entry " of the death of 
Louis XII. without male issue, and the coronation 
of her beloved Francis. Between the births of his 
daughters, Louise and Charlotte, at Amboise, the 
tidings of Marignano came to Louise. " The fight 
began," she writes, " at five in the afternoon and 
lasted all the night; that very day (13th September 
15 1 5) I left Amboise to go on foot to Notre Dame 
de Fontaines, to recommend to her him whom I 
love more than myself, my glorious son and my 
victorious Caesar, who has subdued the Helvetians." 
On the same day there was seen in Flanders a great 
comet shaped Hke a lance; the beginning of the 
reign of Francis was crowned with military glory; 
we have already seen how it ended. 

Within the shadow of the lime trees on the ter- 
raced garden of Amboise is a small bust of Leonardo 
da Vinci, for it was near here that he died. His 
remains are laid in the beautiful chapel at the cor- 
ner of the castle court, and the romantic story of 
his last moments at Fontainebleau becomes the sad 
reality of a tombstone covering ashes mostly un- 
known and certainly indistinguishable; " amongst 
which," as the epitaph painfully records, " are sup- 
posed to be the remains of Leonardo da Vinci." 
He had been brought to Paris a weak old man of 



Cbmbotde 75 

sixty-five, by Francis, in pursuance of a certain fixed 
artistic policy, to which it may be noticed this for- 
gotten and uncertain grave does but little credit. 

To Francis I., rightly or wrongly, is given the 
glory of having naturalised in France the arts of 
Italy; to him is due the architecture built for ease 
and charm which turned the fortress into a beautiful 
habitation, which changed Chambord from a feudal 
stronghold to a country seat, and which left its 
traces at Amboise, as it did at Chaumont and at 
Blois. He found in France the highest and most 
beautiful expression of the work of " the great un- 
named race of master-masons;" he found the 
traditions of a national school of painting, the work 
of Fouquet and the Clouets, but for these he cared 
not;^ for him the only schools were those of Rome 
and Florence, and though by encouraging their 

^ For an account of Fouquet, see chapter on the Dukes of 
Orleans. Jehan Clouet, called Janet, was Court painter to 
Francis I. after 1518, and died in 1540. His painting is nota- 
ble for its simplicity and delicacy. His best known works 
are the equestrian portrait of Francis (on parchment), in the 
Uffizi, and the half-length on panel at Versailles. There is 
also a portrait of the Princess Marguerite in the Royal In- 
stitution by him, though it is usually attributed to Holbein, 
with whom the school of the Clouets was contemporary. 
There are other fine examples of their work at Hampton 
Court, notably the Dauphin Francis. The most famous of 
the family, Francois Clouet, was born at Tours, and the castles 
on the Loire contain several examples of his work. 



76 did %, 



outatne 



imitation he weakened the vital sincerity of French 
art, yet from his first exercise of royal power the 
consistency always somewhat lacking in his politics 
was shown clearly and firmly in his taste for art. 

Only the pupils of the other great masters were 
to be had from Italy ; so Giovanni Battista Rosso 
(known in France as Maitre le Roux), who had 
studied under Michael Angelo, came to Paris for a 
sufficient inducement. The Raphaelesque figures 
of Francesco Primaticcio soon presented a contrast 
to Le Roux's more vigorous handling, and the 
quarrel between the two artists, which only ended 
in Rosso's suicide, was still more embittered by the 
arrival of the masterly and impudent Benvenuto 
Cellini, whose extraordinary autobiography gives 
many piquant details of his stay in France. 

But while the King was employing his Italians 
upon Fontainebleau, Jean Bullant was already at 
work, who built Ecouen for the Constable,^ and 

1 Jean Bullant was the last of the old master-masons and 
the first of the great architects of France. Of the palace he 
began in Paris for Catherine de Medicis nothing is left but a 
large Doric column, now attached to the modern Halle aux 
Bles. The Queen used to climb up its staircase to consult the 
stars. With Bullant at Ecouen was Goujon, who began life 
as a simple mason under Maitre Quesnel, and began a long 
friendship with Pierre Lescot by working with him at the 
Rood Screen of St. Germain I'Auxerrois. His best works 
are the Diane Chasseresse, and the statues of the Hotel Car- 
navalet. 



uhmbolde 77 

Goujon, who was to carve the Diane Chasseresse 
for Anet. The truly original art of these men, some 
of whom had need of help, some of whom, like 
Lescot, the Sieur de Clagny, were strong enough to 
stand alone, went on its own way untouched by the 
foreign influences which Francis brought from 
Italy, or only using the best of the ideas which the 
foreign workmen brought them. 

The whole question of the position of Francis in 
the movement of the Renaissance is far beyond the 
scope of these chapters, but three things at least 
seemed clear to us as we stood by the tomb of 
Leonardo at Amboise — that there was a strong 
national school of sculpture, of painting, and of 
architecture in France that deserved more encour- 
agement from the French King than it obtained; 
that " the first pure dream " of art from Italy by 
which the spirits of this older school were touched, 
was worth far more both to the nation and to the 
interests of art than the decadence of the Italy which 
Francis brought to Paris; and finally, that if the 
King so far neglected the greatest of all those whom 
he invited to his Court, the most accomplished and 
most varied intellect the world has ever seen, he can 
have had but little true appreciation of the foreign 
talent for whose sake he neglected the vigorous 
schools of art and industry at home. 



Chmbolde — oke (oondpizac^j 



CHAPTER XVI 

AMBOISE— THE CONSPIRACY 

** Ne presche plus en France une Evangile armee, 
Un Christ empistole, tout noirci de fumee, 
Protant un morion en teste, et dans sa main 
Un large coutelas rouge de sang humain." 

Diane de Poitiers does not seem to have cared 
much for Amboise, so the reign of Henry H. does 
not come into its story, but with the boy who fol- 
lowed Henry to the throne begins the most terrible 
scene in the history of the castle. 

In November 1559, Marie Stuart was riding into 
Amboise with her young husband, Francis II., 
barely fifteen years of age, beneath the bright crisp 
sunshine of a winter in Touraine, through gaily- 
decorated streets filled with a crowd of men and 
women cheering the new King and his northern 
bride. Five months afterwards Marie Stuart rode 
through the same streets again, with none to watch 
her but armed men, the doors and windows of the 
houses closed, and only here and there a gibbet or a 
corpse by way of decoration. For the little town 

had suddenly become the centre of a widespread 
Vol. II— 6 81 



82 Old (bouzaine 

movement — a movement which had begun many- 
years ago, and gradually gathered force almost un- 
seen and unappreciated by the Court, until at last 
it broke suddenly and terribly into view with the 
conspiracy of Amboise. 

The strangely new doctrines of Calvin had begun 
to penetrate Touraine soon after Francis I. had 
brought the Italian Renaissance into France, and 
the queer cave dwellings in the rocks of St. Georges 
and Rochecorbon already concealed hermits with 
tendencies too revolutionary and unorthodox to be 
sheltered in ordinary resting-places. But the full 
consequences of the spread of the new doctrines did 
not become apparent until later, and it was not until 
the accession of a mere child to the throne that the 
feeling to which those doctrines had given rise 
joined itself to a more definite political grievance, 
and became the expression of an actual party in 
the kingdom. 

At the death of Henry II. the influence of the 
Guises became paramount at Court, and it was the 
policy of Catherine to join their party and to secure 
the additional support of the Constable Montmo- 
rency, whose nephews. Admiral Coligny and his 
brother D'Andelot, were in the opposition with the 
Bourbon princes, Antoine, King of Navarre, the 
Prince of Conde, and the Cardinal de Bourbon. It 



Cbmboide — oke Goadpttac^ 83 

was therefore necessary, if the Guises were to have 
a free hand, that the ground should be first cleared, 
and Catherine was persuaded to send the Bourbon 
princes and their following away from Court. At 
the same time began fresh rehgious persecutions, 
with a vigour encouraged by the promises which the 
Cardinal de Guise had made to his foreign allies, to 
root out once and for all the troublesome heresy 
from France. Already the persecutions had devel- 
oped into a reign of terror which began with half- 
drunken slaughters in the Rue Marais and lasted all 
the winter, and the iniquitous trial of Du Bourg at 
length frightened the Huguenots into writing for 
help to the Bourbons; the opposition in politics was 
thus brought into relations with the opposition in 
religion, and gained in strength from its new ally. 
Catherine had characteristically promised help to 
the Huguenots, without the faintest intention of 
giving any assistance, and had even gone so far as 
to tell Coligny that she would see and listen to a 
clergyman of the reformed religion whom he would 
send her. As a matter of fact she was completely 
in the power of the Guises, and it was against this 
power, which was already felt and resented in wider 
circles than those immediately about the Court, 
that the first blow was to be aimed, for the greatest 
indignation had been aroused throughout the king- 



84 did % 



ouzattie 



dom by their flat refusal to summon the States- 
General. 

Meanwhile the King suddenly grew weaker than 
ever, and was ordered by his physician to spend the 
winter and spring at Blois, where terrible rumours 
began to be circulated as to the methods to be em- 
ployed for his recovery/ During his illness oc- 
curred the mysterious murder of the President, 
Antoine Minard, in Paris. He was a partisan of 
the Guises, and they at once made swift reprisals. 
Du Bourg was condemned and burnt at St. Jean en 
Greve.^ The Huguenots could wait no longer, and 
they found themselves irreparably joined to the 
great party of the " Discontented," which now con- 
tained three main elements, — the first imbued with 
an honest zeal for their religion, and with a 
thoroughly sincere devotion to their country and 
their King; the second, mainly composed of the 
more ambitious spirits eager for some change from 
the present miserable state of afifairs; the third, 
eager for vengeance on the Guises, both for public 
and for private reasons. 

^ He was supposed, absolutely without foundation, to be 
desirous of bathing in the blood of infants to remove the 
blotches on his skin. See the Memoires of Louis Regnier de 
la Planche, from whom in the main the following account of 
the conspiracy is taken, in combination with the testimony of 
Vieilleville and of De Castelnau. 

- See Bib. Nat. Estampes, Hist, de Fr. reg. Q. b. 19. 



Ubmkoide — (jfie Gondpitaci/ 85 

Moved by these various feelings the Huguenot 
party went for counsel to their natural leaders, the 
Princes of the Blood, " qui sont nes en tel cas legi- 
times magistrats," and their cause was at once taken 
up by Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde. The 
gist of their demands was, to oust the usurpers, to 
get hold of the persons of Frangois, Due de Guise, 
and of his brother Charles, the Cardinal, and then 
to try them for their many sins before the States- 
General, which would be immediately summoned. 

The difficulty lay in the first move; but a man 
was forthcoming at the crisis, " a certain gentleman 
from Perigord, Godefroy de Barry, Seigneur de la 
Renaudie," who at. once proffered his services, and 
bent so keenly to his task that in a few weeks a 
great assembly of nobles was being secretly held at 
Nantes to discuss the plan of action. All treason- 
able attempts against the King himself were from 
the first distinctly repudiated. The first resolution 
of the assembly ran as follows : " Protestation faite 
par le chef et tons ceux du conseil, de n'attenter 
aucune chose contre la majeste du roi, princes du 
sang, ni Etat legitime du royaume." 

" Le chef " was of course Conde, and his name of 
" chef muet " had a distinct meaning in the plan of 
the conspiracy : to his party he was a " leader," to 
the Court he was " dumb " ; and it was with the 



86 Old Ooutaine 

distinct approval of his party that he went into 
Amboise later on, to give them assistance from 
within, when it should be needed, without arousing 
the suspicion of the Guises. Neither he nor his 
friends imagined the terrible position in which he 
was to be placed. 

The council at Nantes further resolved that on 
the loth of March (1560) the Guises should be 
seized at Blois. De Castelnau Avas given command 
of the Gascons, and captains were similarly ap- 
pointed for the levies that were to come from every 
province.^ 

The whole project was very properly condemned 
by the far-seeing ministers of Geneva as being im- 
possible without treasonable practices. The King, 
if he was to be taken out of the power of the Guises, 
must presumably be handed over to Conde; but the 
remonstrance came too late. The movement went 
on and grew in strength, people came together with 
the idea of presenting their grievances to the King, 
in all confidence marching without much mystery 
and by every road to the Loire, many without know- 
ing of the plot of La Renaudie or ever having heard 
his name: this is most clearly seen from the fact 
that his death did not stop the others gathering from 

1 For a list of the Captains and Provinces in the plan of the 
Conspiracy, see Mezeray, iii. 18 (fol. 1685). 



(%mboide — ^he (Sotidpitaci/ 87 

all round, intent on getting audience from the King 
in spite of the hated Guises, and the swift executions 
did not stay the tide that kept pouring in from the 
woods only to be mercilessly killed. 

While making his preparations in Paris La Re- 
naudie lodged with one Des Avenelles, who was 
supposed to be a Huguenot, but who disclosed as 
much as he could discover of the whole affair to 
the secretaries of Duke Francis and the Cardinal. 
The Guises were thunderstruck at the extent of 
the conspiracy; they had always suspected the 
Chatillons, but they could not understand this 
widespread movement. Their ally, the King of 
Spain, was far better informed. Coligny, D'An- 
delot, and Conde had all been in communication 
with Elizabeth, and Anabaptists, Calvinists, and 
Huguenots in England, in Switzerland, and in Ger- 
many, were all vaguely conscious that some at- 
tempt was to be made. 

In fear for the King's safety — for they realised as 
well as their opponents the importance of the royal 
person — they hurriedly moved the Court from 
Blois to what was considered the far safer fortress 
of Amboise, where, as a matter of fact, the castle 
was almost without troops or stores, where the town 
was full of Protestants, and Tours hard by was hos- 
tile or indiflferent. With three hundred resolute 



88 did 'S. 



outatne 



men La Renaudie might have succeeded yet, but he 
was fettered by advices from Nantes, fatally hin- 
dered by the number of his accomplices, and ended 
by waiting too long for the decisive stroke. 

The Guises had at any rate the merit of swiftly 
realising the emergency of the situation. They 
sent out messengers in every direction calling for 
help; they did their utmost to arouse popular 
hatred against the Huguenots by numberless ac- 
cusations fabricated with the utmost disregard for 
truth; finally, they tried to get hold of the chiefs of 
the conspiracy. 

The Admiral and his brother came immediately 
they were summoned, and the Guises got nothing 
but very plain speaking from Coligny. " They 
were disgusted," said he, " that the affairs of the 
State should be wholly managed by persons whom 
men considered to be foreigners; what was needed 
was a good edict in clear, significant, and unam- 
biguous terms that both parties should be bound 
to keep." 

Conde came in too; not seduced this time by the 
attractions of the " escadron volant," though Cath- 
erine doubtless put him down among her many vic- 
tims, but of his own free will, to brave out the 
Guises and call an assembly of the States-General 
when the plot was over. 



ubftitolde — ohe Gotidpltac^ 89 

The day for the attempt had been fixed afresh for 
the 1 6th of March. Young Ferrieres was to go first 
to the castle with some hundred men, who were to 
be concealed hard by, La Renaudie and De Castel- 
nau would follow with the rest from Noizay, which 
was the new headquarters now the Court had 
moved; a signal would be given from the roof of the 
castle that all was going well within, and then " le 
chef muet " was to speak. 

But most unfortunately a certain Captain Lig- 
nieres had broken his oath and betrayed all to 
Catherine de Medicis. The Guises then roused the 
country on the plea of an attack against the King's 
safety, and affairs began to come to a crisis. Soon 
afterwards the Comte de Lancerre, with a few of the 
garrison from Amboise, met De Castelnau in the 
woods and attempted to arrest him, but astonished 
at the numbers who suddenly appeared to his assist- 
ance, they retired precipitately and rushed back to 
Amboise shouting, " Treason, help, in the King's 
name ! " No one looked out except a baker, who 
shut his door again immediately, and De Castelnau 
might have easily secured the town by a sudden 
attack. The Court was alarmed by the discourag- 
ing news of thirty captains and five hundred cavalry 
waiting with a good company of men-at-arms at 
Noizay, and Vieilleville was asked to represent to 



90 Old Ooiitalne 

them the baseness of their conduct, and offer a free 
pass to the presence of the King. 

Nothing would do, however, but the word of a 
prince of the blood, so the Due de Nemours ap- 
peared, and " having sworn on the faith of a prince, 
on his honour, and on the damnation of his soul, 
and having further signed with his own hand his 
name, Jacques de Savoie," he led De Castelnau and 
the Huguenot deputies into the castle, " all consid- 
ering it a great honour and advantage to have thus 
free access to the King." 

The inevitable result followed. They were seized, 
thrown into prison, and " tormented with hellish 
cruelty." Chancellor Oliver was forced to explain 
the nature of a royal promise, and the executions 
began, much to the disgust of the Due de Nemours 
whose word had so cynically been disregarded. 
VieillevUle, well pleased to be out of so discredita- 
ble an affair, was sent to Orleans. 

Meanwhile La Renaudie, hearing of the danger 
from a distance, sent help; his men were all seized 
by the Guises' cavalry. By bands of tens, fifteens, 
and twenties they were tied to the horses' tails and 
dragged in to death; the better-dressed were killed 
at once, stripped, and left dead in the ditches. The 
Guises felt that they were not safe yet, and they 
resolved to play desperately " for double or quits." 



(%mboide — olie (oondpitacy 91 

But on the i8th they began to feel more assured, 
for La Renaudie himself, whose bravery deserved a 
better fate, was shot by a servant of the Baron de 
Pardeillan, whom he had killed at the same moment 
in a chance encounter in the woods. His body was 
carried to the town and hung upon the bridge with 
a placard stuck upon the neck. 

But the Guises still chafed at the sight of their 
enemies within the castle. They strove to make 
out that the conspiracy was not against themselves 
at all, but that their name was used merely as a pre- 
text to abolish monarchy, to reduce France to a 
repubhc of Cantons, to kill off the nobility and es- 
tablish Communism. To try and prove this they 
made fruitless efforts to collect evidence of treason 
from Navarre, or from La Bigne, the servant of La 
Renaudie; but they could elicit no more than the 
truth, " that no treason against the King was 
meant." Their efforts succeeded better with the 
lower classes : all the scoundrels of the neighbor- 
hood rallied to the powerful Guises. Some two 
thousand idlers, muleteers, grooms, carters, lackeys, 
ruffians of all kinds, flocked to the rich plunder of 
arms and clothing like kites upon the carrion : 
many peaceable merchants were robbed of their 
clothing and all that they possessed, and murdered 
as heretics if they offered to resist. 



92 6U "So 



uzatne 



The slaughter of the wretched Huguenots went 
on bravely throughout all the forest paths, and 
" many others," says De Castelnau, " were taken 
and hanged to serve as a precedent in so strange a 
case; a certain number, too, were strung up to the 
battlements of the castle to astonish the rest." For 
a month this went on, till every cut-throat in the 
Guises' pay had made his fortune, for the country 
swarmed with men who waited to be killed, or citi- 
zens like those of Toulouse, who refused to move 
before they had spoken with the King, and were 
only cured of their importunity by being hanged 
from the castle windows. 

The young King tried to mitigate the severity of 
the Guises, exclaiming in horror " at the punish- 
ment of so many of my poor subjects," but it was no 
use. Stronger heads than his had given way in the 
crisis. The miserable Chancellor Olivier, forced 
against his will to connive at all this blood-shedding, 
shrieked aloud as he saw the dripping hands of one 
of the Protestant noblemen kneeling at the block 
in fervent prayer. He was carried to his bed mor- 
tally sick, where the Cardinal de Guise visited him 
to check this strange weakness of an officer of the 
Court. " Ha ! mauldit Cardinal," cried Olivier, 
" tu te dampnes et nous fais aussi tons damnez." — 
" My son," said the prelate, " resist the Evil One." 



ubmboide — ulie (jondplx-acy 93 

— " So he has come at last ! " cried the other with a 
hideous laugh, as he turned his back upon De Guise 
and died. 

The scene at the castle at this time was a terrible 
one. The passages and courts were thronged with 
men and women crying for justice or for mercy; 
whole families were to be seen in despair at the ap- 
proaching death of a father or a husband; but no 
energy, no bribery, no intercession availed to stay 
the vengeance of the Guises; if their cruelty was 
unparalleled, their precautions were infinite as well. 
The most brilliant example of their stage manage- 
ment was yet to come. 

Beneath the walls of the castle, in full view of 
that iron balcony whose bars rusted blood-red still 
guard the windows looking down upon the Loire, 
the scaffolds had been raised with great magnifi- 
cence : all round the square in which they stood 
were lines of planked seats rising in tiers from the 
ground, and filled with an expectant crowd; the 
night before, thousands of people had slept in the 
fields around the town to avoid being late for the 
sight of the morrow, the very roofs were black 
with sightseers, and a merry barter was carried on, 
by the fortunate owners of houses looking out upon 
the square, for spaces at the windows which gave 
a good view of the block and the scaffold draped 
in black. 



94 Old (Douxalne 

After mass in the castle and the various churches 
of the town, the lines of the Scottish guard, who had 
been holding the ground since daybreak, were 
broken by the first of the Huguenot nobles reserved 
for execution before the royal presence. All those 
who could walked bravely forward, speaking little 
save to refuse the help of the Catholic monks who 
pressed the hated faith upon them to the last; many, 
with faces white and drawn and reddening bandages 
about their feet, were helped by their friends 
towards the place of execution; these were they 
who had been tortured beforehand in the dungeons 
of Amboise. 

The whispers of the crowd were suddenly hushed, 
for from the mouths of all the prisoners rose the 
words of the Psalm, which Clement Marot had not 
long ago translated, " God be merciful unto us and 
bless us; and show us the light of His counte- 
nance," ^ and as the crowd heard the last notes die 
away and followed the singers' eyes with theirs, 
they saw a quick movement of all the prisoners' 
heads; the Prince of Conde had appeared upon the 

1 " Dieii nous soit doux et favorable 
Nous benissant par sa bonte, 
Et de son visage adorable 
Nous fasse luire la clarte. 

" Dieu, tu nous as mis a I'epreuve 
Et tu nous as examines, 



yenetal '"View of o^mboide 

(Allowing tkc yaUezy ftotn <vfiic/i t/ie Gouxt 
watched the cyxecution of the (jGuguenotd 



Cbmbolde — oke bondpttaci/ 95 

gallery above between the young Queen, Marie 
Stuart, and the Duke of Orleans, and all the gentle- 
men, his followers who were about to die, had 
saluted the prince, their " chef muet." He was 
brave enough to give them the last satisfaction of a 
dangerous farewell. 

The Court had just left the dining-hall, and had 
been all led out, men, women and children, by the 
Duke of Guise to see this last and finest execution 
of the rebels. The ladies shuddered at first, but 
Catherine de Medicis was there to show them the 
conduct proper to a loyal friend of the little trem- 
bling King, who would have turned his head away 
but did not dare. Behind the two Queens stood the 
Papal Nuncio, below was the Lieutenant-General, 
with the marshals and their suite on horseback. The 
whole Court was there, as ready, apparently, for the 
executions of Amboise as they had been for the 
fetes just finished in the hall at Blois. But not all, 
we may at least believe, were there of their own will : 
if it be too true that the young Marie Stuart stood 
and watched this horrible execution, she was at 

Comme I'argent que Ton epreuve 
Par le feu tu nous as affines. 

" Tu nous as fait entrer et joindre 
Aux pieges de nos ennemis, 
Tu nous as fait les reins astreindre 
Des filets oix tu nous as mis." 



96 did "S. 



owcaine 



least no more willing to look on than was the Prince 
of Conde; both were forced by the iron will of the 
Guises and the policy of the Queen-mother. 

The whispers of the crowd were checked again, 
by a sign from the Due de Guise, and in the silence 
that followed the first name was called out,^ and 
the first head fell — and still the Psalm that had be- 
gun again was chanted by the knot of prisoners, and 
grew fainter as their number lessened and the axe 
kept falling fast. The young King grew pale at the 
sight of so much blood, the very headsman wearied 
of his task, for the axe's edge was dull and blunted. 
Conde could keep still no longer, " Ah, what an 
easy task," he cried, " for foreigners to seize on 
France after the death of so many honourable 
men ! " The Guises never forgot the words, and 
hated the Prince until his death. 

The very crowd beneath them was murmuring at 
the sight of such unflinching courage, and as the 
last victim mounted to the block with the lines of 
the old Psalm upon his lips, there was a universal 
movement which even the agitated King could not 
misunderstand — but it was too late; the Cardinal 
had made the fatal sign and the last head fell with 
the rest.^ 

1 Jean Louis Alberic, Baron de Raunay. 

2 Michel Jean Louis, Baron de Castelnau Chalosse. The 



Ubmholde — o/ie bondptzacif 97 

The Guises were fairly maddened with blood; 
gallows and scaffold were not enough for them; 
heads were stuck upon the railings of the castle, the 
markets were befouled with the dead bodies, the 
Loire rolled thick with human corpses, the chateau 
and the woods were crammed with dead: a man 
was brought in while De Guise was breakfasting, 
hung by the neck to the window-bars, and sent with 
a stab to join the others. 

The whole place reeked like a shambles, so that 
the Queen-mother, persuaded by the softer spirits 
of her Court, left Amboise at last, and riding 
through the woods still filled with ghastly traces 
of the massacre, carried off the young King and 
Queen to forget the heretics in fresh riots and de- 
bauchery at Chenonceaux/ 

Only one among the Guises had shown any com- 

brother of this man had already laid down his life for the 
royal family at Amboise. One night when Francis I. and all 
his Court were in bed, the Duke of Orleans roused his com- 
panions and made a wanton assault on the band of lacqueys 
who were on guard at the bridge; the duke would have been 
killed in the scuffle had not M. de Castelnau rushed in, re- 
ceived the blow, and died. 

1 " A huit ans et demi le pere mena son fils (Agrippa 
d'Aubigne) a Paris, et en passant par Amboise un jour de 
foire, il veit les testes de ses compagnons d' Amboise encore 
recognoissables sur un bout de potence, et fut tellement esmu, 
qu'entre sept ou huit milles personnes, il s'ecria — lis ont 
descapite la France les bourreaux." — CEuvres Completes de 
d'Aubigne, ed. Reaume et de Causade, p. 67. 
Vol. II.— 7 



98 did ^ou 



"caine 



passion for the martyrs, Anne d'Este, the daughter 
of Renee de France and the Duke of Ferrara, and 
mother of Madame de Montpensier and Henri 
le Balafre. She was at first instinctively hostile to 
the Florentine who had been so unexpectedly 
raised to the throne of France, but she ended in 
being weakened by her influence, and by the 
strength of the family into which she had married. 
But the Duke Francis could not completely change 
the gentle nature of his wife which she inherited 
from the princess her mother. " This is a piteous 
tragedy," she cried to Catherine de Medicis, who 
noticed her faltering at the sight of the executions; 
" some great misfortune will surely fall upon our 
house in vengeance for it." Her husband rated her 
soundly for her weakness. The horrible scenes of 
the massacre of Vassy were yet to come, and pass 
before her very eyes without a possibility of hin- 
drance, Catherine de Medicis and the Guises were 
to have yet another wholesale slaughter, for Am- 
boise and Vassy were not enough, and the night of 
St. Bartholomew was needed to satisfy them; but 
the assassin Poltrot justified her fears, and after her 
husband had been murdered, her son Henry paid 
the penalty for the sins of his house in the chamber 
of the King at Blois. 

And at this time the position of this extraordi- 



Uhmtolde — She Gondpttactf 99 

nary family might well have pardoned them their 
pride. The Duke Francis had gained an easy mili- 
tary reputation at Metz and Calais, his father before 
him had served his country in the field and made 
every use of the position which his successes gave 
him, his mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, the 
great-aunt of Henry IV., his niece, Marie Stuart, 
was on the throne of France. The Cardinal, his 
brother, absorbed the rest of the- power which 
Francis left untouched; he was called " the Pope 
across the Alps," and treated his " colleague " at 
Rome on a basis of equality. He was as eloquent 
in speech as he was learned in theology, and finally 
had absolutely under his control three great relig- 
ious orders who throughout France and Italy 
worked his will without question.^ 

Little wonder that when once so terribly em- 
barked upon a definite policy the Guises felt them- 
selves strong enough to pursue it to the bitter end. 
The rank and file had been taught a sharp lesson; 
it remained to deal with the leaders. In their rage 
against the Prince of Conde, who never gave any 
justification for their attacks, they had even sug- 
gested to the little King that he should stab the 

1 The reputation of this family is shown by the famous story 
of the beggar who, as one of them passed by and gave him 
gold, cried, " Ah ! that must be Jesus Christ or the Cardinal 
de Lorraine ! " 

l.ofC. 



100 Old ^, 



outatne 



Prince with his dagger while pretending to be jest- 
ing with him, and they put down his scruples to the 
cowardice of a half-grown child. At last they got 
him to summon Conde formally into the royal 
presence, while their officials searched his baggage 
for incriminating evidence — too much ashamed of 
their mean task to look closely, and finding abso- 
lutely nothing. The intrepid hunchbacked Prince 
appeared at once, and demanding a full court to 
hear what he had to say, boldly gave his accusers 
the lie, saving the honour of the Royal Family, and 
declared himself ready to uphold his word by single 
combat. This straightforward method checked the 
Guises for a time; the Duke was even compelled to 
pose as his champion, and must have looked almost 
as ridiculous as did his accomplice, Catherine, in the 
disguise of a sympathiser with the reformed religion. 

Conde was allowed to go unharmed for the time, 
and Coligny was sent to Normandy. The Consta- 
ble had managed to skilfully veil any real expres- 
sion of opinion in Paris, by an ambiguous speech 
that committed him with neither party. 

The first terror of surprise into which the Guises 
had been thrown when the plot was revealed to 
them had shown them one thing clearly, that it was 
impossible to put off holding the States-General. 
They determined to make this distasteful necessity 



Chmboidc — ^lie bondpttact/ 101 

fit in with the rest of their schemes, and having 
secured the King and the Court at Orleans, and 
filled the town with armed men, they proceeded to 
entice Navarre and Conde by every means their 
unscrupulousness suggested, to attend the meeting 
of the Parliament. The princes of the blood came, 
in spite of every warning; and trusting themselves 
unhesitatingly to the protection of the King, were 
immediately arrested, and would have certainly been 
executed but for the sudden death of Francis II. 

This unlooked-for contretemps ruined for the time 
being the Guises' combinations, and they were 
obliged to have recourse to a fresh line of policy. 
The famous League was formed, and the founda- 
tions laid for that long civil war which was meant 
to end in the supremacy of the house of Lorraine. 
By skilfully posing as the party of the nation, of the 
Bourgeoisie, and the Catholic religion, and by de- 
scribing their opponents as aristocrats who fa- 
voured the doctrines of the heretics, they for a 
time maintained the upper hand; for, though they 
themselves were backed by foreign help, the opposi- 
tion could, no more than the Guises, describe itself 
as the national party. Nor was that opposition fort- 
unate in its leaders. Coligny alone was worthy of 
the cause for which he died; Navarre was fickle, 
useless, and untrustworthy; Conde, with all his 



102 uLd ^owcatne 

courage, was but little better. It was not until 
Jeanne d'Albret brought her son into the camp after 
the battle of Jarnac that a real leader appeared, and 
the party of the Politiques became the party of the 
nation. It was not until the Leaguers were seen 
to be the really hostile and foreign element in the 
struggle that in Henry of Navarre was recognised 
the true head of the party of France and of the 
throne, and the distracted kingdom at last had rest 
under a rule that was strong enough to crush all 
opposition. 

The history of Amboise stops with this last 
tragedy, whose progress and results we have just 
sketched. One more conspiracy it was yet to see — 
the results of the murder of Le Balafre at Blois — 
but its details are of no more importance than the 
scoundrels who engaged in it. 

Almost the last personage of interest whom Am- 
boise was to receive within its walls, was Fouquet 
the Surintendant, who was carried here by D'Artag- 
nan after the marvellous chase and capture which 
all readers of Dumas remember. 

Long years after, the room from which the execu- 
tions had been witnessed served as a prison for Abd- 
el-Kader, many of whose suite lie buried in the gar- 
dens. Small wonder that in such a dwelling even 
the lovely views across the valley of the Loire could 



Uhmhoide — S/ie (oondpltac^ 103 

not console them for the warmer breezes of their 
native land. 

The Franco-German war is responsible for the 
loss of the great " Bois de Cerf," which for so many- 
centuries had been the wonder of the Castle. In 
1577 Girolamo Lippomano saw three men lift them 
with difficulty from their place; and in 1644 John 
Evelyn writes : " In the ancient chapell (at Am- 
bois) is a stag's head or branches, hung up by 
chayns, consisting of twenty brow antlers, the 
beame bigger than a man's middle, and of an in- 
credible length. Indeed it is monstrous, and I can- 
not conceive how it should be artificial; they show 
also the ribs and vertebrae of the same beast; but 
these might be made of whalebone." 

It remained for a German soldier to discover that 
they were a gigantic fraud in wood. Before the 
" rude conquerors " could get their booty to the 
next station, the famous horns had crumbled into 
a mass of worm-eaten dust. 

And now this mediaeval hoax has vanished, there 
is scarcely anything to be seen in the interior of 
Amboise. The energies of modern proprietors have 
been chiefly directed to removing the monstrosities 
of former occupants in the last two centuries; but 
the work of restoration has stopped incomplete, and 
we could only notice with satisfaction the efforts 



104 did "B 



outaine 



begun to clear away the woodwork which had been 
built up to separate the old spacious apartments into 
more numerous and meaner rooms. But the out- 
side of the castle brings an ample recompense. 
From no place we had yet seen were the views so 
numerous and so magnificent; for even the high 
keep of Loches lost all that Amboise gained in the 
wide sweep of the Loire that flowed past its battle- 
ments to the Bridge of Tours, whose cathedral the 
more keen-sighted of us could discover to the west. 
Before leaving the town we strolled through the 
shady wall along the quay to St. Denis, a cross 
church with a massive central tower, in Roman- 
esque and transitional style, with very fine detail in 
the carving of the pillars; and as we crossed the 
bridge again, the Queen of Navarre's story came 
into our memory of the poor muleteer who, coming 
home from Blois, found his wife murdered at her 
door, across the river. It seemed impossible to 
leave Amboise without some terrible impression of 
sudden death; for we were passing the very spot 
where La Renaudie's body had been lifted in the 
wind — a warning to all conspirators who fail. 



-oa cJlDeine STBazgot^ 



CHAPTER XVII 

LA REINE MARGOT 

" Voir la cour sans voir Marguerite de Valois, c'est ne voir 
ni la France ni la cour." 

" Behold his bed . . . threescore valiant men are about 
it, they all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath 
his sword girt upon his thigh because of fear in the night." 

From Amboise the story of Touraine moves on to 
Blois, from Francis II. trembling above the scaffold 
of the Huguenots to Henry III. spurning with 
his foot the face of murdered Guise. Many and 
strange had been the changes of fortune before Le 
Balafre's ambition met so terrible an end. The 
Conde whom we saw at Amboise had fallen at Jar- 
nac nine years afterwards; the unstable Antoine of 
Navarre was dead; Jeanne d'Albret, the noblest 
woman of her time, had brought her young son 
Henry, Prince of Beam, to be the head of the 
Huguenot party, though he was as yet too young 
for much more settled policy than affection for his 
mother and young Conde, and obedience to the 
brave Coligny. 

But into the heartbreaking struggle of the civil 
107 



108 did % 



outatne 



wars we cannot enter. It is but possible for us to 
look swiftly at the troublous reign of Charles IX. 
through the medium of the writings of another 
Marguerite, another and the last child of Catherine 
de Medicis, " not less divine but more human in her 
moods " than the gentle mystic sister of King 
Francis. 

From her we shall learn the life of that Court 
which still wandered so often to the pleasant castles 
of Touraine, from the reeking atmosphere of Paris 
and the Louvre. It is joined with her name that 
there first comes into prominence the young King 
of Navarre, who shall at last bring order into the 
chaos of conflicting parties; it is in company with 
her that we shall hear, from very close at hand, the 
clamour of that tocsin of St. Bartholomew, whose 
echoes troubled every town in France; and we shall 
be listening to the most celebrated woman of her 
time, to a princess gifted with the beauty of an 
Aphrodite, the refinement of a Valois, and a loyalty 
that was all her own. 

The life of Marguerite began in the Court of 
Catherine of Medicis, in the company of the " esca- 
dron volant " and such ladies as Madame de Ne- 
vers and Charlotte de Beaune Semblan(;ay, grand- 
daughter of the unhappy Semblangay, executed in 
the reign of Francis I., a slight, fair-haired woman, 



Jo a dlDeine Slba'c^ot 109 

by turns sparkling with vivacity and languishing 
with a gentle weakness, wife of Simon de Fizes, 
Baron de Sauves, and afterwards of Frangois de la 
Tremouille, Marquis de Noirmoutier. 

In 1569 came news from Henry, Due d'Anjou, 
that threw the whole Court into a bustle of prep- 
aration. A battle was imminent, and he must see 
his mother and the King before he fought. The 
journey from Paris to Tours was done in three and 
a half days, and the ladies seem to have derived 
much amusement from the distress caused to poor 
Cardinal de Bourbon,^ whose constitution was little 
fitted for such unwonted exertions. 

It was in the park of Plessis-lez-Tours, at this 
time, that the childhood of Marguerite first con- 
sciously ended, and her brother secured her help 
and friendship by treating her as a woman grown 
up and responsible, who should help his interests 
with the King and with their mother. " Such lan- 
guage," she writes, " was quite new to me. My 
life hitherto had been quite thoughtless; my only 
cares the dance and hunting. I had even neglected 
my dress and personal appearance." ^ Her life was 

1 Charles de Bourbon, Archbishop of Rouen, son of the 
Duke of Vendome, called King Charles X. by the League. 
He would be about forty-six at this time, and died twenty-one 
years later. 

2 Memoires de la Reine Marguerite, Bibl. Elzevir., P. Jannet, 
i8=;8. 



110 uLd Ooutatne 

henceforth to be among the society described by 
Brantome, " whose vices it would be repulsive to 
suggest, whose virtues were homicide and adul- 
tery," ^ where " no man was honoured who could 
not show blood on his hands, no woman admired 
who would not boast as loudly of the favours she 
had granted, as her gallants of the favours they had 
received." 

In such a court, where ignorance was impossible, 
innocence was almost as rare; and this latest addi- 
tion to the beauties of the " escadron volant " soon 
received the approval of her companions in some 
very creditable scandals which were in circulation 
about her various intrigues almost immediately 
after her appearance in public. The Aurora or the 
Cytherea of the lesser poets of the Court, the 
Pasithee of Ronsard's verses, she had rapidly taken 
her place as the acknowledged queen of the many 
revels of that disastrous time; and indeed at the age 
of eighteen she seems to have easily surpassed even 
the loveliest sirens in that band whom Catherine de 
Medicis had gathered round her, of the fairest faces 
in the land, for the bewilderment of the gallant cap- 
tains and politicians of France. 

Her thick black hair shaded a face of brilliant 
whiteness, and from beneath long dark lashes her 

1 Swinburne, Miscellanies ("Mary Queen of Scots"), p. z?^- 



jSa Soelne cJlba^^ot 111 

eyes shone suddenly as the delicate red Hps moved 
in speech, and with words of no common kind too, 
but witty with the unrestrained freedom of her time, 
and with a learning whose facility and skill were a 
perpetual amazement to her companions. 

Small wonder that her name soon was whispered 
in connection with that of the leader of the Catholic 
party, Henri de Guise, the head of the faction with 
whom she was thrown most in contact. At twenty- 
two years of age the young Duke of Guise had well- 
nigh reached the level of his father Francis's fame; 
the height and elegance of his figure, the natural 
majesty of his looks and bearing, seemed to confirm 
the popular opinion which already idolised the son 
of the great captain, and which was to support him 
afterwards in his ambitious and ill-fated struggle for 
the throne of France. 

Unfortunately for Marguerite, her own Memoires 
are not the only sources open to us for information 
as to her character and her methods; but it seems 
fairly clear that this, probably her first, love was at 
any rate sincere. She can as little hide her admira- 
tion for De Guise at this time, as she can conceal 
her passionate feelings for the brave Bussy 
d'Amboise later on; and she deserves at least such 
compassion from her judges as shall be always given 
to a nature keenly susceptible, little liking restraint, 



112 0U ^, 



outatne 



and sacrificed mercilessly upon the altar of political 
necessity. 

Her vexation at the insinuations of Du Guast ^ at 
this time brought on a fever, in which she was 
tended by her favourite brother the King; for the 
royal physicians had themselves been stricken with 
the disorder. To rid herself of similar persecution 
in the future, she besought her sister Claude, now 
Duchess of Lorraine, to arrange the marriage of 
Henri de Guise with Catherine de Cleves, Princesse 
de Porcian, which was celebrated in 1571. The 
House of Lorraine was already but too closely con- 
nected with the royal family; any further alliance 
was impossible. 

But other reasons, still more important, had 
already settled the destinies of Marguerite. Peace 
had been made with the Huguenots after Jarnac 
and Montcontour; and an attempt at securing the 
head of the rebel party by a close alliance with the 
throne was only what might have been expected 
from the characteristic political methods of Cather- 
ine. It was even rumoured that unless prompt 
measures were taken, the young Bearnais would 
soon be betrothed to the English Elizabeth," for 

^ He was assassinated in 1575. No writer of the sixteenth 
century would have deprived Marguerite's reputation of the 
honour of his death, so it is put down to her. 

2 See M. H. de la Ferriere, Le XVIme Siecle et les Valois. 



Jha c/oelne (yJoaz^ot 113 

whom Catherine had already arranged, in her own 
mind, a match with the Due d'Anjou. The King 
was as determined as the rest, and spoke with some 
levity of the tardiness with which the Pope gave his 
approval. Margot should be married at any cost, 
and his own royal hand should give her away. 

The opposite party in politics were equally de- 
lighted, and Jeanne d'Albret, after her first and very 
natural disgust at the habits of the Court, managed 
the negotiations with a skill and intrepidity which 
deserved a better fate; for after returning to Paris 
from her visit to the Court in Touraine, she sick- 
ened suddenly and died — of a pleurisy, so it was 
given out; but rumours were persistently spread 
that her death was owing to the scent of some gloves 
skilfully prepared by Rene, the Queen's Florentine 
perfumer; and these reports gained credence from 
the fact that Ambroise Pare, in his examination of 
the body, was forbidden to look at the brain, the 
sole organ that Rene's poisons would have touched. 
Be this as it may, Jeanne d'Albret was too good a 
woman for her existence to be long tolerated; her 
honesty, like Semblangay's long before, was too 
transparent, her truth too courageous, for life 
among the Court of Catherine de Medicis, and when 
her duty to her son brought her into contact with 
that Court, she was only allowed to live long enough 
Vol. II.— 8 



114 GLd Oowcaine 

to complete the negotiations, and not too long for 
the interests of the Queen-mother. She is one of 
the few women of her time whose death it is pos- 
sible, for every reason, to regret/ 

In August 1572 the marriage of Henry of 
Navarre to Marguerite de Valois was celebrated 
with great splendour at the Louvre; and surely 
there was never a festival at which political necessity 
so triumphed over human feelings, not only in the 
principal pair concerned, but in nearly all the spec- 
tators. For the young King of Navarre had to 
stifle his genuine grief for his mother's sudden 
death, his wife had to conceal her own passions be- 
neath the mask of a proper conjugal affection, no 
less had Conde to forgive D'Anjou his father's mur- 
der, and the young Due de Guise to forget Poltrot 
de Mere. Opinions were strangely divided, for 
even the Catholics themselves realised that some- 
thing more was in progress than they could fathom, 
and the Huguenots still felt uneasy, they knew not 

1 It will be remembered that Jeanne was the daughter of 
our first Marguerite d'Angouleme, Queen of Navarre, the 
author of the Heptameron. It was for Isabeau, her fascinating 
aunt, that Clement Marot, a favourite with her mother, wrote 
some of his most charming lines. 

" Elle a tres bien cette gorge d'albastre, 

Ce doux parler, ce cler teint, ces beaux yeux, 

Mais en effet ce petit ris folastre 

C'est, k mon gr^, ce qui lui sied le mieux." 



Joa c/aeine (y/Oat^ot 115 

why. So little could the Princess conquer her re- 
pugnance at the last moment to the marriage forced 
upon her, that the King was obliged with his own 
hand to bend her head down in token of assent 
during the ceremony. Neither husband nor wife 
treated that ceremony as anything save the mockery 
it really was; and they went their own way, bound 
yet divided, to the end. 

The sole link that ever bound them was the same 
political necessity which had first brought about 
their marriage; and to this political necessity 
(though to this only) Marguerite remained for ever 
loyal. Her husband was no very brilliant example 
of conjugal fidelity; and the accepted lover of 
Madame de Sauves could not severely criticise the 
mistress of De Guise. 

Thus their strange married life began. The first 
interruption to the fetes and dances was the " acci- 
dent " to Coligny, when he was wounded in the 
shoulder by Maurevel's pistol-shot from a window 
in the Louvre. It was connected by public opinion 
with the old ill-founded quarrel between Guise and 
Coligny about the murder of Duke Francis; ^ and 
for a while all seemed quiet again. 

iThe original still exists (Bib. Nat. MS. F. 209, fo. 37) of 
the act by which the children of Duke Francis accept the 
King's decree as to the innocence of Coligny of their father's 
murder by Poltrot. 



116 OLd Oouzaine 

What followed is a matter of history too well 
known, too wide in scope, for these chapters to 
relate. We can but look upon one small part of the 
great tragedy of St. Bartholomew, the part that 
came beneath the actual notice of Marguerite, so 
lately married, and from that infer the horrors of 
the rest. 

The resolution to massacre the Huguenots was 
taken on the 23d of August 1572. Catherine's sole 
object seems to have been to allow both parties to 
cut each other's throats and leave the throne the 
stronger for their fall. Marguerite tells us what 
really turned the brain of the poor passionate King : 
" The Huguenots were coming to accuse Guise " 
of attempting Coligny's murder. De Retz had to 
explain who were the real culprits, with hints per- 
haps of another Sicilian Vespers, and other such 
inventions as the Italians with Catherine de Medicis 
would employ to fire Charles's unsteady imagina- 
tion. He suddenly and wildly gave his consent, 
and at four the next morning Besme, the brutal 
follower of the Guises, had thrown Coligny's corpse 
from the upper window to the feet of his master, who 
stood waiting in the court. 

Of all this Marguerite was told nothing. Her 
first suspicion of the truth came as she went to bed 
on the night of the council. Her sister Claude 



JL>a cJoeine <yT6at.^ot 117 

clung to her with tears, beseeching her not to go; 
but Catherine sternly bade her twice to be off to 
her own room. Arrived there, and praying to be 
saved from the unknown dangers which she felt 
around her, she found the husband she had married 
but a week ago waiting upon his bed, who ordered 
her to lie down. " This I did," she writes, " and 
then found that his bed was surrounded by some 
thirty or forty Huguenots whom I did not know; 
for it was but a few days since my marriage. All 
night they talked of nothing but the mishap which 
had befallen the Admiral, resolving as soon as day 
should break to demand justice on Guise from the 
King, in default of which they would do justice 
themselves. 

" As for me, the tears of my sister continued to 
trouble my heart, and I could not sleep for the fear 
which she had given me, though of what I knew not. 
So the night passed, and I never closed my eyes. 
At daybreak the King, my husband, said that he was 
minded to go and play tennis with King Charles, 
and then and there to ask his justice. He left my 
room, and all the gentlemen with him. I saw that 
it was day, and thinking that the peril of which my 
sister spoke was past, being heavy with sleep, I told 
my nurse to shut the door that I might sleep at my 
ease." Meanwhile the tocsin which gave the sig- 



118 Old ^owcalne 

nal for the massacre had rung from St. Germain 

I'Auxerrois, Coligny was past all human justice, 

and the Louvre itself soon became little better than 

a shambles. 

" An hour afterwards," goes on the Princess, 

" when I had fallen into a deep sleep, there came 

suddenly a man beating with his hands and feet 

against my door, crying, ' Navarre, Navarre ! ' My 

nurse, thinking it was the King, my husband, ran 

swiftly and opened the door. It was a gentleman 

called M. de Leran,^ who had a sword-thrust in the 

shoulder, and a wound from a pike in the arm; he 

was pursued by four archers, and they all rushed 

after him into my room. He threw himself upon 

my bed for safety. Feeling his hold upon me I 

threw myself into the space between the bed and 

the wall; he followed, keeping fast hold of my body. 

I knew nothing of the man, and could not discover 

whether he was there to harm me, or whether the 

archers were in pursuit of him or of myself; so both 

of us cried out, the one as frightened as the other. 

At last, by God's will, M. de Nanqay, Captain of the 

Guard, came in, and finding me in such a plight 

could not, for all his pity, stay his laughter; with 

1 Readers of Dumas know better; it was La Mole flying from 
Coconnas and the rest, and taking refuge with the woman who 
was afterwards to give him her love, as she gave him pity 
now. Compare the scene in La Reiiie Margot. 



JLya cJi>eine cJIba'c^ot 119 

sharp reprimands to the archers for their indiscre- 
tion he ordered them forth, and granted me the life 
of the poor man who still was clasping me — him I 
made to lie down, and gave him remedies in my 
own cabinet until such time as he was quite cured. 
While I changed my clothes, for I was all covered 
with blood, M. de Nangay told me what was going 
on, and assured me that my husband was in the 
King's chamber and would suffer no harm. Mak- 
ing me put on a dressing-gown, he led me to the 
room of my sister, the Duchesse de Lorraine, where 
I came more dead than alive; for as I crossed the 
ante-chamber, whose doors were wide open, a gen- 
tlen*an named Bourse, flying from the archers who 
pursued him, was run through within a few paces 
from me. I fell half-unconscious into the arms of 
M. de Nanqay on the other side, thinking for the 
moment that the same blow had wounded both of 
us." . . . 

In her sister's bedroom she begged for the lives 
of two gentlemen in her husband's suite, which 
were with difficulty granted her; others were less 
successful, for the King's brain had given way at 
the sight of blood, and he was little better than a 
madman. The scenes outside the Louvre were 
worse still. Tavannes was slaying like a butcher; 
Montpensier like a fanatic; De la Rochefoucauld, 



120 Old ^. 



outatne 



who thought the whole thing one more of the wild 
King's jests, had his throat cut in the middle of a 
scream of laughter; few like young Caumont de la 
Force were so fortunate as to escape, sheltered be- 
neath the dead bodies of his brother and his father. 

The harvest of death went on, throughout Paris, 
throughout France, until the whole nation seemed 
smitten as by a pestilence. Coligny, the one pure- 
minded politician-soldier, was murdered; Goujon, 
the artist, was killed even at his work; Ramus, the 
philosopher, was dead; L'Hopital had died of grief; 
afid the morality, the religion of the nation was dead 
with them. A week after the massacre a great 
flock of crows and ravens settled upon the Louvre, 
and for days afterwards the King seemed to hear 
the shrieks of dying men around the palace. 

Some annoyance was felt that, amid all this blood- 
shedding, both Navarre and Conde had come forth 
scot-free, and the plots began again; but Margue- 
rite would not desert her husband, or consent to a 
divorce. La Mole and Coconnas, puppets in the 
hands of stronger wills, paid for their loyalty with 
their lives, and the sadness of Marguerite grew 
deeper still at the loss of her favourite brother, the 
King, " tout I'appuy et support de ma vie, un frere 
duquel je n'avois receu que bien." The next reign 
belongs to other chapters, but there are one or two 



Jo a cJoeine cwoaz^ot 121 

more pages of the Memoires of Marguerite, one or 
two more incidents in her Hfe, which cannot be 
passed over. 

It is in 1574 that " the brave Bussy d'Amboise " 
is first mentioned. " He was born," she says, " to 
be the terror of his enemies, the glory of his master, 
and the hope of his friends; " and there is little 
doubt that he helped to console Marguerite for her 
husband's absence; it was only five years afterwards 
that his love for the Countess of Montsoreau was 
so terribly punished by her husband. But political 
reasons again proved superior to sentiment in the 
life of this somewhat hardly-used princess. 

Life at the Court became unbearable when war 
had been openly declared against her husband out- 
side, so she left Paris to help the affairs of her 
brother D'Alenqon in Flanders. 

" I travelled," she tells us, " in a litter made with 
pillars covered with pink Spanish velvet, broidered 
with gold, and adorned with devices worked in silk; 
the litter was fitted with glass too, and covered with 
devices," — some forty of them, all speaking of the 
sun and of its effects. 

They went to Liege by way of the Meuse in 
charming boats, but the pleasure of the whole party 
was suddenly stopped by unforeseen disasters — first 
by the rising of the river, which obliged them all to 



122 6li "S. 



owcatne 



fly for safety up the mountain-side, and then by the' 
sudden illness of a maid-of-honour, Mademoiselle 
de Tournon. For the romantic story of this young 
lady's love and death, the tender-hearted reader is 
referred to Marguerite's own words; they would 
lose too much in the rendering to permit of their 
transcription here/ 

The account of her journey continues to be full 
of interest. Huy, some six miles from Liege, 
proves a most inhospitable resting-place, for they 
drew chains across the streets, and pointed cannon 
at the Princess's lodging all the night. At Dinan, 
farther on, the burgomasters had just been elected, 
" tout y estoit ce jour la en debauche, tout le monde 
yvre; " and Marguerite's cortege was kept outside 
the gates while the drunken citizens threw away 
their cups and seized what arms were near to oppose 
her entry. At last she rose in her litter, took ofif her 
mask, and beckoned to the most important of them 

1 Notice particularly the scene where her ungrateful lover 
meets her corpse being borne out for burial; he is told that it 
is Mademoiselle de Tournon — " a ce mot, il se pasme et tombe. 
II le fault emporter en un logis comme mort, voulant plus 
justement, en cette extremite, luy rendre union en la mort, que 
trop tard en la vie il luy avoit accordee. Son ame, que je 
crois, allant dans le tombeau requerir pardon a celle que son 
desdaigneux oubly y avoit mise, le laissa quelque temps sans 
aucune apparence de vie ; d'oii estant revenu, I'anima de nou- 
veau pour luy faire esprouver la mort, qui d'une seule fois 
n'eust assez puni son ingratitude." 



Jo a cJloelne cy/uaz^ot 123 

that she wished to speak with him. After some 
trouble it was arranged that part of her escort 
should be allowed with her inside the town. 

Unluckily, a servant of the bishop's was recog- 
nised among them — and the Bishop of Liege was 
an especial foe — so in a moment all was tumult and 
disorder again. A drunken deputation came up to 
Madame la Princesse, apparently with the object of 
protesting against the bishop, but scarcely able to 
utter anything intelligible at all. The oldest of 
them, stuttering and smiling, asked her whether 
she was a friend of the Comte de Lalain, and her 
answer that she was not only friend but relation too, 
restored everything to a complacent state of baccha- 
nalian friendship. During the night the poor 
Princess's enemies were active. Du Bois, the 
King's agent, had arrived, and was hard at work 
plotting to get Marguerite into the power of the 
Spaniards, and the town into the hands of Don 
Juan. 

But her good friends the burgomasters, having 
slept off their wine, had not forgotten their prom- 
ises of friendship, and helped her willingly to escape. 
So when Du Bois arrived to lead her to Namur, with 
feigned complaisance she left the town in his com- 
pany, with several hundreds of the citizens escorting 
her as well; and by dint of carefully watching and 



m 0Ld ^. 



outaitie 



talking to him, she managed to progress in exactly 
the opposite direction, to embark herself and her 
litters on the river, and finally to put the stream 
between her followers and the Spaniards, much to 
Du Bois's disgust, who only realised too late the 
cool audacity of the whole proceeding, and was left 
storming with anger on the wrong bank amid an 
amused crowd of citizens from Dinan. With many 
more adventures she at last travelled by way of 
Cambresis and Chastelet to her own La Fere, where 
her brother was waiting for her. 

But they were soon obliged to return to Paris to 
the old intrigues; they arrived in time for St. Luc's 
marriage with Jeanne de Brissac, at which D'Anjou 
was so insulted by the " mignons " of the King. 
The Prince's situation at the Court had become in- 
tolerable again, and Marguerite began to plot for 
his escape. With some difficulty she managed to 
let him down from a window in the Louvre with a 
rope ladder; it became necessary to conceal all 
traces of the flight, so her maids put the ladder on 
the fire; it made so great a blaze that the chimney 
itself caught, and in a few moments the royal archers 
were clamouring at the door to be let in, and extin- 
guish the blaze. They were with difficulty prevailed 
on " to leave the princess asleep," and let her maids 
put out the fire, and so the danger passed. At last 



Jo a cJljeine alba'C^ot 125 

Marguerite herself left the Court for Gascony " et 
ce petit Geneve de Pau," where she found her hus- 
band ill, and nursed him tenderly. Several months 
at Nerac followed " ou nostre cour estoit si belle et 
si plaisante, que n'envions point celle de France." 
If reports were right, Chancellor Pibrac helped the 
Princess to pass the time here; and Chicot has left 
upon record how the young Turenne (then Due de 
Bouillon) was also gracefully allowed to fall in love 
with her catholic-minded majesty; Henry himself 
beguiled the time with La Fosseuse, and the war 
that followed could have borne no more appropriate 
name than that of " La Guerre des Amoureux." 

It ended in the treaty of Fleix. And after the 
failure of her favourite brother's expedition in Flan- 
ders, and his death (from the fatal bouquet of Diane 
de Montsoreau), Marguerite returned to Nerac 
from her short visit to the Court in 1583, and left 
her husband again after his excommunication by 
the Pope two years later. A short and stormy visit 
to Agen followed, and then she disappears within 
the Chateau d'Usson, one of the old prisons of Louis 
XL in Auvergne. Here the civil wars of 1588 
passed her by unharmed, though two years later the 
royal troops of her husband chased the Leaguers 
from the field before her very eyes; and so for many 
more years the actual Queen of France lived in 



126 Old ^i 



oiL'caine 



seclusion, refusing constantly to grant her husband 
a divorce while Gabrielle d'Estrees is living, but 
after her death (in 1599) consenting to the Italian 
marriage. 

Though she came again to Paris, she still lived 
in close retirement until her death some sixteen 
years later — a retirement which, by her friends, is 
called a literary and cultured retreat; by her ene- 
mies a debauch of wickedness sheltered by the 
seclusion of her various palaces; and of a like mixed 
nature is the estimate of her character that has been 
handed down to us. 

As her beauty is of that mould which was 
apparently more in favour three centuries ago than 
now, so her morals can with even greater difficulty 
be made to conform with any modern standard of 
decorum; but as a type of the Court lady of her 
time she is unapproachable. With an accurate 
knowledge of the powers her beauty gave her, and 
a careful economy of its resources, she tried to live 
out, according to her knowledge, that life of senti- 
ment, of passion, of sheer human nature, which had 
well-nigh been crushed out of her at the beginning 
by the relentless policy of the Queen-mother. 
Amidst the depravity and corruption of the most 
shameless Court in Europe, her intellect and her 
refinement were as rare as they were worthy of 



Joa oloelne STBat^ot 127 

respect; and if we had only her own Memoires to 
guide us, our estimate of her character and her 
worth would be a very different one — ^with so much 
grace are they written, with so much insight and 
skill are the events of a distracted time described. 
Such women as Jeanne d'Albret are rare in the six- 
teenth century; a Marguerite de Valois is needed 
to complete the picture — a woman who, to the 
virtues of the Valois added but a small part of their 
vices, who of all the children of Catherine de Medi- 
cis is the one posterity could least have spared. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

BLOIS 

" J'avance parmi les decombres 
De tout un monde enseveli, 
Dans le mystere des penombres 
A travers des limbes d'oubli." 

Gautier. 

Balzac was afraid that later generations would 

know nothing of the Chateau of Blois save from 

his pages; so far advanced, in his day, was the ruin 

and decay of the whole fabric. But that ruin has 

been suddenly and thoroughly arrested; the hand of 

the conscientious restorer has intervened, and that 

with a lavishness of display, an ingenuity of detail, 

very rarely equalled. The " buried world," upon 

which three centuries of kindly time had laid their 

touch, has been refashioned in a somewhat garish 

blaze of gold and carving; there are but few 

" mysterious shadows " in these brightly-coloured 

rooms; there is but little left to fancy, to the dreams 

of the imagination, in a reconstruction so painfully 

complete. 

Yet it is difficult to find fault with that spirit of 
131 



132 6U "B. 



owcatne 



almost reverential care which has given us back the 
great Castle of Pierrefonds, vi^ith all its intricacies of 
defence, which has restored the walls of wondrous 
Carcassonne, which has preserved the marvels upon 
Mont St. Michel; and of the two extremes, Blois 
is perhaps nearer to what is possible for us of per- 
fection than is Chinon, deserted, ruined past recall. 
To few houses is it given as to Langeais, or Azay- 
le-Rideau, to escape decay and yet preserve the 
mellowed beauty of their past — a beauty like the 
golden haze upon a famous picture, or the strange 
bloom upon an antique marble, which is something 
different from any hues or colourings wrought by 
the hand of man. 

But at Blois no change, no renovation can check 
the rush of memories that press upon the traveller 
directly he has crossed the threshold beneath the 
statue of the good King Louis, for the threefold 
fashion of the architecture around him speaks elo- 
quently of the three great ages through which the 
life of the castle has passed. The early years when 
the Orleans princes were educated here, and 
Valentine Visconti mourned her murdered hus- 
band; the terrible days of the sixteenth century, 
when Guise was murdered above the exquisite 
carvings of the central staircase; finally, the decay- 
ing glories of Gaston and his daughter, fitly framed 



Sxteztot of (^fpital (^taUcadc at cSloid 
in sPtti^ of ffzancid I. 



lo'td 133 



in the ruled lines and spaces of the frigid building 
opposite the entrance. 

The first view of Blois from the town shows the 
outside of the wing of Francis I., ending at the 
right hand corner in the great tower which was half 
destroyed when Mansard joined his later buildings 
on to the older fabric; the whole stands on a rising 
slope; and beneath the fine buttresses, upon which 
the wing of Gaston rests, the road plunges deeply 
into a dark ravine which winds downward to the 
Church of St. Sauveur, and was once the bed of a 
stream that joined the waters of the Loire. 

The entrance to the chateau is to the left of 
Francis's wing, along a winding terrace that leads 
to a quiet moss-grown square, the old basse-cour 
into which Raoul rode with letters to the prince, 
and where the son of Charles the Poet heard the 
soldiers shouting that the Duke of Orleans was the 
King of France. There is his statue as Louis XIL 
above the entrance-gate,* with the badge of the 
porcupine beneath it, which he took from the 
" camail " that his father wore at Agincourt; and 
in the inner court, to which the gateway leads, the 
line of lightly chiselled columns that support the 
painted roof immediately beyond is also the work 

^ Not the original, which was destroyed at the Revolution. 
" The father of his people " was not good enough. 



134 Old "B. 



owcatfie 



of this King, who did much for the improvement of 
the old feudal fortress which the Dukes of Orleans 
inherited from the Counts of Blois. The oldest 
work of all is on the left side of the great court, by 
the chapel which saw the consecration of Joan of 
Arc's banner, and the betrothal of Margot to Henry 
of Navarre; the only other remnant of the earlier 
fabric is the apartment in which the States-General 
were assembled in the reign of Henry HI. Con- 
trary to the general rule (says M. Viollet le Due) 
that all great halls in palaces or chateaux should be 
composed of two floors, this one is built wholly on 
the ground-floor, and has no rooms beneath it; it is 
separated into two parts by a line of columns, and 
roofed by a double row of vaulted arches; it is not 
by any means an imposing room — nor, indeed, 
could the chateau itself, in the thirteenth century, 
have been at all a striking edifice — and it is scarcely 
helped by the extraordinary scheme of colour and 
pattern which the modern architect has spread 
regardlessly over its walls. 

This council hall was reached by the King 
through a private staircase leading from the wing 
of Francis I., the wing to the right hand of the en- 
trance, whose exterior we, like La Fontaine, had 
seen from the great square in the town outside. It 
is this wing that contains the gem of the whole 



lold 135 



castle — the ''escalier a jour " that springs, many- 
sided, from the sculptured wall and lights up all 
the court with the exquisite beauty of its lines and 
carvings. Of the whole architecture of this wing, 
by an unknown artist, as so often happens in Tou- 
raine, there is an excellent description by Mrs. 
Mark Pattison.^ " The main features," says this 
writer, " are such as are common to other chateaux 
in the valley of the Loire; but there are important 
though minor differences which specially individ- 
ualise it. The architectural scheme is very simple. 
Three rows of pilasters are superimposed one above 
the other. At about two-thirds down the front the 
open spiral staircase juts out and towers upwards. 
It seems at first to stand free, breaking up the even 
succession of small columns and their perpendicular 
descent with the bold projection of its octagonal 
lines. But above, it is embraced and caught into 
the whole mass by the broad crowning cornice 
which gathers within its strengthening bands every 
various curve. The sculptured dormers fret along 
its edge, searching the air with their pointed 
tongues, and twice the carved cases of the chimney 
stacks break aloft through the roof like towers, but 
the cornice keeps firm hold upon their base." It 
is the grave simplicity of the wall from which the 
1 Renaissance of Art in France, vol. i. p. 51. 



136 did '^, 



omatne 



staircase springs, the fine and choice instinct of 
proportion which it displays, says the same writer, 
that mark this building as a production of the new 
movement, as an advance on Chenonceaux and 
Langeais. 

The staircase itself is a triumph of ingenuity — 

*' Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
All made out of the carver's brain," 

a perfect whole, for which a master mind drew the 
first plans, and every detail was carefully and lov- 
ingly worked out. 

The figures poised above the entrance, though 
they have been for three hundred years out of doors, 
still preserve the clear, firm touch of their unknown 
sculptor's chisel, and there is little doubt that these 
statues are either some of the first work of Jean 
Goujon in his youth, or are the productions of that 
school by which he was first and most directly in- 
fluenced. Everything of unknown origin at this 
period is generally put down to this artist, but in 
this case there are certain indications of style which 
seem to lend somewhat more of certainty to a con- 
jecture usually a trifle reckless. The date of Gou- 
jon's best work is considerably later than the time 
at which the wing of Francis I. was built; yet so 
elaborate a piece of architecture as this staircase 



told 137 



may very well have remained without the statues 
that completed it until long after all the surround- 
ings had been finished. There are several stones 
in it that to this day are quite untouched, a few are 
only roughly chiselled out; the end of the sixteenth 
century was too hurried in its methods to allow the 
perfect completion of a structure for which, as there 
seems reason to believe, the initial ideas may have 
been sketched quite early in the reign of Francis I. 

Goujon was born in 1520,^ and it is quite possible 
that while still a simple mason under old Maitre 
Quesnel, and before the work with Pierre Lescot 
at St. Germain I'Auxerrois had made him famous, 
the young artist chiselled these figures, or at least 
the one on the right hand of the entrance, which 
particularly recalls various mannerisms in the works 
that are recognised as his. 

The folding clothes are held in by a belt below 
the actual waist, and the drapery is caught up on 

1 For the date of Goujon's birth see Archives de VArt Fran- 
gais, by A. de Montaiglon, iii. 350. Blois was building in 1515 
(L. E. de Laborde, La Renaissance des Arts a la Cour de 
France, p. 190); in 1540 Goujon was at Rouen. The next 
year he worked in St. Maclou and in the Cathedral; in 1542 
with Lescot; two years afterwards at Ecouen. The " Eons 
Nymphium " and the " Caryatides " were carved in 1550, and 
five years later he had begun the work on the Louvre at which 
he was employed while the massacre of St. Bartholomew was 
going on. 



138 did '^, 



outaine 



the swell of the hip in a way peculiarly his own, and 
reproduced on the famous Fontaine des Innocents, 
and in a bas-relief in the Salle des cent Suisses; the 
very attitude in which the wavy sheaf of water-flags 
is held is also characteristic of his methods; but 
more convincing still is the elaborate treatment of 
the head-dress, with its pendent ornament, and the 
chiselled bracelet upon the arm, both of which are 
found especially prominent in the " Diane Chasser- 
esse," another example of the long lithe limbs, and 
the small breasts high on the body, which Goujon 
was especially fond of reproducing. 

The carving of the canopy of this statue at Blois 
is alone worthy of long study; though every detail 
varies, yet each contributes gracefully to the per- 
fection of the whole; here especially is it possible 
to realise what a labour of love was the work of the 
old masons, what time unlimited their workmen 
had, to chisel cunningly at the firm white stone be- 
neath the mellow sunshine of Touraine, until each 
part was filled with something of the individuality 
of the man whose life was spent in slow and perfect 
labour with his hands, until the scheme which gave 
each workman his allotted task was finished in its 
harmony of carving, its strength and delicacy of 
construction and of form. It is often by the shape 



laid 139 



and moulding of his mere grotesques that a great 
artist's power is seen; and this is the case here. 
Between the statues we have just examined and 
the main wall is a salamander, marvellous in its 
originality, its living force of movement, clinging 
to the stone with a reality that is little short of 
creative; the line of its spinal column curves firmly 
from neck to tail as in a living thing, the grip of 
hind and fore feet set with claws is amazing in 
its grasp and actuality of movement and organic 
strength, the very warts upon its scaly back add 
one more touch of Hfe to this extraordinary 
carving. 

But the wonders of this perfect structure do not 
cease with the sculpture upon its outward walls. 
The stairs wind upwards, folding round their cen- 
tral shaft as the petals of a tulip fold one within 
the other, and by a slight curve at the attachment 
of each step, a strange look of life and growth is 
produced that is marvellously helped by the ascend- 
ing spiral of the column which supports the whole; 
its waving lines rush upwards like a flame blown 
from beneath, or like the flying spiral of a jet of 
water falHng fast yet strongly from a. height; there 
is in it a beauty that is elemental, a touch of the 
same nature that curves the tall shaft of the iris 



140 Otd Fontaine 

upwards from the pool in which it grows. But the 
delicate strength of this central column reproduces 
with an even greater accuracy the lines that in 
natural objects are most beautiful because most 
adapted to the purpose they fulfil; the spiral upon 
its shaft is the exact curve which is contained within 
a sea-shell for the beauty of the work is of that 
necessary order which comes of perfect skill, and 
finds its ultimate justification in the essential har- 
mony of natural structures. In this particular case 
it seems more than probable that an actual shell 
was used consciously as a model; for the absolutely 
unique double curve of the steps, with their relation 
to the ascending curves from which they grow, is 
precisely the same as the spiral and its attachments 
in the shell. There is a more striking correspond- 
ence still: the lines upon the outside of the top 
part of the shell will be found to have the same 
arrangement as the balustrades on the exterior of 
the staircase, and reversed, in exactly the same zvay 
as the spiral. It is tempting to complete the 
hypothesis by imagining such a shell as this to have 
been in the possession of the architect to whom the 
first plans of the work were due : he must have been 
a man who collected natural objects to study the 
secrets of their beauty; a man of unequalled con- 
structive power, for the groin-work and vaulting 



(Sentzal S^illat of cftancid I. 



lold 141 



of the stairs are not the least astounding part of the 
whole building; a man, too, of extraordinary imagi- 
nation, and with a sense of harmonious proportion 
rarely equalled in the world. Scarcely any one of 
that time save Leonardo da Vinci possessed a 
genius at once so universal and so thorough, and 
Leonardo was at Amboise, a Httle farther down the 
river, just when the first plans of this staircase would 
be required. Is it possible that Francis found one 
last sketch, one remnant of the dying artist's 
genius, and employed to decorate his newest 
chateau the last " tour de force " of the great master 
for whom he had no care to build a tomb? 

It is possible to realise, even more keenly than 
elsewhere, the full spirit and movement of the true 
Renaissance, when such a gem of art and architect- 
ure as the wing of Francis I. is placed next to the 
cold and meaningless productions of Francois Man- 
sard at the height of his reputation, at the most 
chilling point of his respectability. In this wing, 
opposite the entrance, so different from all the rest 
of the chateau, lived Gaston d'Orleans, dullest of 
royal dullards, himself so chillingly respectable that 
he had formed a plan of delivering up the whole 
of the palace to the mercies of reforming Mansard, 
and would have done so, had not Providence re- 
moved him in time and preserved for the wonder 



142 did ^1 



ouzatrie 



of later ages the fantasies of a creation too unfet- 
tered for his slow wit to understand. 

The early history of the castle is connected with 
those Counts of Blois whom we have already heard 
of in tracing the fortunes of their mortal enemies, 
the Angevin Counts. Upon the remains of the old 
Roman camp which held the tongue of land be- 
tween the Loire and the now lost Arou, the robber 
captains of the sixth and seventh centuries built 
their first rude stronghold, which was later on to 
become part of the wide possessions held by the 
Counts of Vermandois, Champagne, and Blois. 
These three houses were among the first of the great 
feudal families of France in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries; their relationships extended to lands as 
far apart as England and Palestine, while nearer 
home Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine, and Navarre 
were all more or less closely connected with the 
same powerful stock. It was from Thibault le 
Tricheur, whose fame still fills the low country all 
round Chambord, that the Chateau of Blois received 
its first donjon built with money raised by certain 
fraudulent practices, and increased by more open 
deeds of violence and robbery. Even if authenti- 
cated records of these times were forthcoming they 
would be of little interest, for the quarrels of the 
barons had not much influence on the real history 



loid 143 



of France; but before the thirteenth century the 
possessions of Champagne and Vermandois had 
fallen by marriage to King Philip IV., and by 1233 
Chartres and Blois had been bought by the Crown 
from another Count Thibault. Blois had become 
Crown property, and was soon to be the recognised 
possession of the family of Orleans. 

The historian Froissart, who was chaplain here 
during the regency of the dukes in the first years of 
Charles VI. 's reign, relates an interview that took 
place between the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry 
concerning the old quarrels between Brittany and 
France; but the castle began to take its actual 
place in the history of France when Louis d'Orleans 
brought Valentine Visconti here from Milan.^ The 
princess had made a triumphant entry into Paris, 
and had immediately secured the good graces of the 
King; but her happiness was very short-lived, and 
this visit to Blois, one of the many homes of her 
clever and unfeeling husband, seemed almost a 
flight from the horror of the poor King's madness, 
which she had tried in vain to soothe, and from the 
dark suspicions of the changeable populace of Paris. 

About this time Eustache Deschamps, the poet, 
was " maitre d'hotel " to the duke, and at his mar- 
riage in 1393 received from his patron a present of 
^ See Chapter VI. " Three Dukes of Orleans." 



144 uld Ooiizalne 

five hundred gold pieces. It was by Eustache's 
care that the Hbrary, which had been begun by a 
small donation from the royal collection, was in- 
creased by the Three Pilgrimages of Human Life, of 
Christ, and of the Soul, bought from one Jehan 
Bizet, and written in cursive characters. There was 
a Legende Doree too, bound in the black velvet which 
the duke especially affected, and a History of the 
Old and New Testament by Pierre Comestor, which 
had been translated in the last century, and cost the 
duke as much as eighty gold crowns. A book to 
the taste of Madame Valentine was perhaps La 
Consolacion de Boece, which her husband bought in 
Paris — she needed comfort as much as most women 
of her time; while the scholarly proclivities of 
the duke himself are traceable in the Problesmes 
d'Aristote, translated by Evrard de Conty, which he 
bought from a Paris student, whose tastes were 
probably more in the direction of the outspoken 
rhymes with which Francois Villon was soon to 
delight the idle scholars of the capital. 

But Valentine was not allowed to rest for long 
in the quiet valley of the Loire. She had to rejoin 
the duke, whose excess and immorality soon 
brought their inevitable punishment, and in 1407 
she was once more at Blois in even greater grief 
than at her former visit, for this handsome, cruel 



loid 145 



husband, whom she had loved passionately in spite 
of all his faults, had been basely murdered in the 
streets of Paris. Her attempts at vengeance failed. 
The poor King's mind, which in its weakness 
showed more plainly all those feelings which its 
strength had hidden, was warped for ever against 
his brother of Orleans; the murder was pardoned, 
praised even, and the gentle heart of Valentine was 
broken in a year. 

Her son Charles in his first years showed but 
little of the poetic temperament which always 
passed almost unnoticed by his companions. In 
company with Dunois, the famous Bastard, the 
most capable of all the children of Duke Louis, he 
was soon at work organising the forces which were 
to fall at Agincourt. In 141 5 the battle had been 
won and lost, Charles had been taken prisoner, and 
the Chateau of Blois was deserted. Twelve years 
afterwards even the library which had lightened the 
hours of those who were left behind in mourning 
for their lord was removed to Saumur for greater 
safety; for tidings had reached the duke in his cap- 
tivity of the movements of the English in the valley 
of the Loire. 

The castle itself was soon filled with tokens of 

coming change. In 1429 Joan of Arc was in the 

Church of St. Sauveur, where the Archbishop of 
Vol. 11—10. 



146 did ^1 



outatne 



Rheims blessed the standard she was to bear to 
victory; and the tide of English invasion turned at 
last. But the delivery of Charles d'Orleans was not 
yet. Dunois was in charge of the castle when the 
conspiracy of the Praguerie broke out that was 
organised by the Dauphin Louis against his father 
Charles VIL; and only in 1440, after twenty-five 
long years, did the duke return home again. Of 
his life at Blois we know already; to him and to his 
son are chiefly owing those Italian influences which 
were most worth copying by French artists, and 
which lend their peculiar charm to the work of this 
period at Blois. But the most important event 
during his life at the castle, both to his family and 
to France, was the birth of the young Louis 
d'Orleans, who was to be King Louis XIL He 
was held at the font by Louis XL The father was 
congratulated by his poets, and by the whole 
country; and having little else to do in life, he left 
it gracefully soon afterwards. 

The next few years of the story of the Chateau of 
Blois are the years of the childhood of the young 
duke who was to be Louis XIL 

With the help of a miniature in a fifteenth-cen- 
tury MS. of the " Roman de Renaud de Montau- 
ban," we can imagine the boy seated by his mother 
at the table beneath a high red canopy upon the 



loid 147 



dais of the great hall, with two maids of honour in 
their lofty head-dresses on either side. There is a 
hound pacing across the tiled floor and watching 
the pages, who move to and fro between the side- 
board and the dais; and from a gallery draped in 
red, above their heads, the musicians blow quaint 
instruments and play the tunes that poet Charles 
delighted in; while all the time at lower tables the 
talk flows merrily and unrestrained among the vas- 
sals and retainers of the Court. 

Saint Gelais tells us how the boy was taught to 
read before he was seven years old, and soon showed 
a great love for history, which he probably first read 
in the four great black velvet volumes of the Miroir 
Historial in his father's library, a kind of unwieldy 
encyclopaedia of the Middle Ages.^ 

By the age of seventeen he could leap, wrestle, 
shoot, and play tennis with the best, and particu- 
larly aroused the historian's admiration for his ex- 
cellent horsemanship. Nor was the example of his 
mother's life thrown away upon him. With the 
help of her women the good duchess made five 
hundred shirts yearly to be given away, and quietly 
provided in many other ways for the poorest in- 

1 The fine library which had been begun by Louis d'Orleans, 
and which was much improved by Louis XIL, was moved by 
Francis L to Fontainebleau in 1544. 



148 uld Oouzalne 

habitants of every town in which she might be 
living. She taught her son to be forgiving at any 
rate, for when he came to the throne after Charles 
VIII. 's death, he behaved civilly enough to the men 
who in earlier years had been obliged to oppose 
him, not only in the Brittany wars but in the hap- 
hazard skirmishes in Italy. 

" La Tremouille," says Jean Bouchet, " made 
great mourn at the death of his master King 
Charles, for with that body he lost all hope of reward 
for his labours." At Saint Aubin, too, he had 
soundly beaten Louis, and had little expectation of 
the generous reception that awaited him at Blois. 
" Le Roi de France oublie les injures du due 
d'Orleans," said the King, and La Tremouille was 
confirmed in all his states and dignities. 

The strength of Louis' character had received a 
rude shock before this from the unfeeling policy of 
Louis XL, and he was only enabled to recover at 
his own accession to the throne. The marriage to 
Jeanne de France, never one of inclination, must 
have been very hard for the young prince to bear 
in the first strength of his manhood. 

Our pity for the unhappy victim of her father's 
cruel calculations has perhaps hardened our judg- 
ment upon the young Duke of Orleans, It is upon 
Louis XL that the blame of the inevitable misery 



laid 14:9 



that followed should rightly be laid. Saint Gelais 
emphasises the impossibility of refusal when once 
the royal will had been declared, and Jeanne must 
have long been ready with the gentle words of 
renunciation and loyalty which La Tremouille 
brought from her to Louis as soon as Charles VIIL 
was dead. 

Her husband was now King of France, and the 
necessity for a son to carry on his line was stronger 
than the ties of individual affection, if indeed we 
may suppose that Jeanne had ever loved the hus- 
band upon whom she had been thrust. She retired 
to the Duchy of Berry with a suitable retinue 
allowed her by the King, and died, with a great 
reputation for her sanctity of life, in 1504 at 
Bourges. 

The proceedings for divorce had necessitated the 
presence in France of one whom we have already 
met at Chinon, Csesar Borgia, Due de Valentinois, 
the bearer of the bull from Alexander VI. 

This extraordinary man was a worthy actor of 
the strange part he had to play, dramatic and inevi- 
table as the succession of events in ancient tragedy. 
He had come to Chinon bearing besides the bull a 
Cardinal's hat for Georges d'Amboise, the first real 
Cardinal prime minister of France, and in a far more 
real sense than Balue or Brigonnet, the true fore- 



150 uLd (Douzaine 

runner of Richelieu and Mazarin. And now Cae- 
sar's presence at Blois was due to the inevitable 
return which had to be made for the favour of the 
Pope's consent. A bride had to be provided for 
this new prince of France, whose dignities were in- 
creased by the gift of the Collar of St. Michael. 
Frederic of Naples absolutely refused his daughter 
Carlotta, and the King, after publicly marrying 
Anne de Bretagne at Nantes in January 1499, pro- 
posed Germaine de Foix or Charlotte d'Albret, 
sister of the King of Navarre, as a wife for the 
Italian. The latter was selected, and we may hope 
that, here at any rate, she was happy in a husband 
who was handsome even for a Borgia; for his face 
and figure, we are told, were very near perfection, 
and he possessed a subtle fascination, even for men, 
that attracted women as a magnet draws the 
iron.^ He wrote to Alexander VI. soon after, de- 

1 Of the few portraits left of Csesar Borgia, Yriarte con- 
siders that the woodcut in Paulus Jovius is the most authentic. 
There is a supposed portrait by Raphael that is not hastily 
to be accepted. 

In the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris there are three 
types of his face — a woodcut in the style of Albert Diirer, a 
drawing by Le Coeur which shows a long nose, flowing hair 
and moustache, and a " bold bad eye," and a cut by B. 
Bernaerts of Cgssar in youth, with the motto — 

" Cui tranquilla quies odio cui proelia cord 
Et rixa et caedes seditioque fuit. 



ioid 151 



scribing his impressions of their " mariage de con- 
venance." 

No sooner was the wedding over than Louis was 
deep in schemes for Italian invasion, which were 
certainly as disastrous for France as Lorenzo de 
Medicis foretold they would be to Italy. By Sep- 
tember in the same year Caesar himself had gone 
to Italy, and his wife was left in France never to see 
this strange husband again/ With his career in 
Italy we have nothing to do. Like a baleful stroke 
of lightning he flashed across the clouds of Italian 
intrigue, and disappeared before men understood 
his meaning. 

After his father's death he went to Spain. His 
political life was ended, and the epilogue came fitly 
in an imprisonment, a wildly venturous escape, and 
a death in a skirmish when fighting for the King of 
Navarre, against desperate odds, with the rebellious 
Comte de Lerins. His memory has been blackened 

^ Charlotte retired to Valence. Later on she tried to reach 
her husband in Italy, but he stopped her at Naples : she had 
become unnecessary, and he had no time or inclination for 
family affection. She then went to live at Issoudon, a town 
which had been given to Caesar, and there educated her daugh- 
ter Louise, who in 1516 (two years after her mother's death) 
married Louis de la Tremouille. By the treaty of Blois in 
October 1505 Germaine de Foix was given to Ferdinand in 
marriage; he was to hand over Naples to her descendants, 
and cement France and Spain against the interest of the 
Borgias. 



152 Old %. 



outatne 



with the universal condemnation of posterity; but 
only to great natures is it given to sin so greatly as 
did Caesar Borgia. Born at a time which had cast 
off the old morality and was not yet ready for the 
new, he grew up amid the most licentious Court in 
a licentious age; yet, of all who then lived, he alone 
saw the true issues to which events inevitably 
tended. 

Far differently from his father, the lying, sensual 
diplomat, he saw, as a true statesman, above all as 
a thorough soldier, the one end that was worth 
striving for. While Ludovico Sforza, while the 
councils of Florence and of Venice were miserably 
wasting time in weakening their neighbours, he 
alone saw that the unity of Italy was worth the 
battle, and was possible, and because he failed he has 
been pitilessly judged. " Gran conoscitore della 
occasione," says MachiavelH of this prince, who cap- 
tivated the intellect of the astute ambassador; and 
this is his chiefest praise. The friend of Pintoric- 
chio, of Michael Angelo, of Leonardo da Vinci, his 
engineer, staunch always in his love for Lucrezia — 
" belle et bonne, douce, courtoise a toutes gens," as 
Bayard says of her — Caesar Borgia must be judged, 
not on his private life, but on his aspirations to his 
country. He failed, he was crushed by adverse 
fortune, he died before his youth had grown to the 



told 153 



strength that should give fulfilment to its promises; 
his motto remained, " Aut Caesar aut nihil." He 
died too young to be a Caesar, he was much more 
than nothing while he lived/ 

In 1 501 a very different scene was passing within 
the walls of Blois. 

Robert de la Marche, who was afterwards the 
Marechal de Fleuranges, tells us of his introduction 
to the Court. Being about nine years of age, and 
" se sentant solide sur son petit cheval, il delibere 
en lui-meme," after the precocious fashion of young 
adventurers of the time, and at length, with his 
tutor and some other friends, he rides to Blois to 
offer the strength of his small arms to King Louis. 
" Welcome, my son," said the King; " you are too 
young yet to serve me, and so you shall go live 
with M. d'Angouleme at Amboise, with whom you 
will be very happy." — " I will go wherever you may 
please to order," replied the child. To Amboise he 
went accordingly, to play with the young Prince 

1 The Valentinois title was revived with Diane de Poitiers, 
and later researches have brought to light that it is still pre- 
served by the Prince of Monaco, as the Almanack de Gotha 
tells us. In the Standard for 24th April 1891 occurs the fol- 
lowing paragraph : " The last descendant of the once powerful 
family of Borgias died last week in distressed circumstances. 
He was the grandson of Don Alberto Calisto di Borgia, and 
during the last twenty years had gained his living as a pho- 
tographer." 



154 Old Ooutaine 

Francis, and make friends with the future King of 
France/ 

Tn the same year there was a magnificent recep- 
tion of the Archduke Philip of Austria at the 
chateau. The whole of the State ceremonial has 
been carefully preserved for us by a conscientious 
Court chronicler. On the 6th of December the 
visitors left Orleans and reached Saint Die, close 
to Blois, where they found several falconers with 
their birds sent forward by the King to amuse his 
guest upon his way. The Archbishop of Sens, 
Monsieur de Rohan, and many others had also come 
from the Court to meet him, and all the way along 
the road the cortege was met by companies of gen- 
tlemen who welcomed the archduke to Blois. It 
was late when they all reached their journey's end, 
and torches were flashing from the river as they 
rode into the town, the ladies all on palfreys har- 
nessed in black and crimson velvet. The whole 
courtyard of the castle was filled with the King's 
archers, and the Swiss bodyguards kept back the 

1 As we have seen, Louis XII. died without male issue. 
Anne de Bretagne had to be content with " ma fille Claude et 
ma fille Renee." " Anne Reine de France," writes Louise de 
Savoie, who was watching events eagerly from Amboise, " le 
jour de Sainte apres 21 Jan. eut un fils, mais il ne pouvait 
retarder I'exaltation de mon Cesar, car il avoit faute de vie." 

Louis XII. 's third marriage proved no more fruitful, and 
Francis, Due d'Angouleme, became Francis I. 



bliateau of cBlol/i, %Vinq of cftancld I. 



loid 155 



crowd that pressed forward to see the procession 
pass into the doorway of the new-built castle, that 
had just been decorated with the porcupine of Louis 
XIL 

The archduke slowly made his way to the great 
hall, which was all hung with cloth of gold, and 
tapestry that pictured the fall of Troy. Upon a 
broad velvet carpet was the King's chair, with Mon- 
seigneur d'Angouleme behind it, and the greetings 
were soon over with great courtesy on either side. 
The archduchess was some little way behind; the 
press had been so great that she was somewhat 
separated from her husband, but at last she ap- 
peared, and having obtained the sanction of the 
Bishop of Cordova she kissed King Louis and the 
young duke, and was then, with great consideration, 
sent away to the ladies. " Madame," said the 
kindly King, " je sais bien que vous ne demandez 
qu'a etre entre vous femmes, allez-vous en voir ma 
femme, et laissez-nous entre nous hommes." The 
crowd was still so thick in all the rooms and pas- 
sages that movement became a thing of time and 
patience, even for the great; and when they met 
the baby princess Claude, carried by Madame de 
Tournon's daughter, that httle lady signified her 
disapproval of the whole ceremony with such lusty 
yells that etiquette had to be disregarded, and all 



156 Old "S. 



ouzatne 



the four-and-twenty small girls who followed the 
princess set themselves loyally to soothe her dis- 
content. 

At length the company were distributed in their 
various rooms, the still-protesting princess to her 
apartment hung with tapestries of farmyard scenes 
and " tout petits personnages," the archduke to his 
chamber, adorned with stories of the Trojan War, 
and Anne de Bretagne to the room that was deco- 
rated with a kind of " natural history pattern " of 
strange birds and beasts. 

Later on refreshments were borne to the arch- 
duchess in solemn procession, led by the " maitre 
d'hotel," with little page-boys after him, clad in yel- 
low silk with velvet slashes, bearing each a waxen 
candle in a golden candlestick. Madame de Bour- 
bon followed, carrying a great gold box filled with 
all kinds of confectionery and sweetmeats, then 
Madame d'Angouleme with a gold box filled with 
napkins, and Madame de Nevers with yet another 
filled with knives and forks. And so the Court 
goes pompously to bed, to wake up and find the 
morning so unkind that the weather barely per- 
mitted them to go outside the castle, though the 
King and the archduke did their best to get sport 
with their falcons. 

Some few more days of solemn ceremony and 



lold 157 



courtly converse and the guests left Blois in as great 
state as they came. It is amusing to note with what 
contempt the chronicler dismisses any attempt at 
business or State affairs which may have been trans- 
acted; for him it is enough that all the ceremonials 
were got through decently and in order; and for us, 
too, the politics may remain in the background: 
what little of the history of the times was possible 
for us has already been described. 

It was at this time that the castle began to assume 
something of its present shape. The whole of the 
wing in which the entrance door is placed was built 
and ready for the archduke and his suite. And it is 
here that we can see Anne de Bretagne at her best, 
among the ladies of her Court. " Like another 
Vesta," says Hilarion Costa, " or another Diana, 
she held all her nymphs in strict discipline, and yet 
remained full of sweetness and courtesy." 

In the library at St. Petersburg there is a picture 
of the Queen weeping for her husband absent at the 
wars in Italy. She is dressed in a black head-dress 
and a square-cut bodice, holding a kerchief to her 
eyes and writing. A great bed takes up much of 
the room, a bird mopes in a cage, and on the floor 
in one corner is a group of girls watching her 
silently. In the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris is 
the sequel to the scene. The Queen is now seated 



158 uid Oowcaine 

upon a kind of canopied throne, while her women 
cluster round admiring the royal letter that is being 
folded. Still another picture shows us the Queen, 
her corded girdle at her side, and a fine smile of 
conscious rectitude upon her face, handing the 
epistle to her courier, while the attendant ladies with 
difficulty restrain their emotions. 

This letter may have been one of those composi- 
tions in verse in which Fausto Andrelini assisted, or 
Jean d'Auton, the King's historian; for Anne was 
strong in literary tastes, and did much to help her 
husband form that famous library, based on the 
older collections of his grandfather, which was after- 
wards to go to Paris.^ One part of the chateau the 
Queen particularly afifected. " Voila mes Bre- 
tons," she would say, " qui sont sur ma perche et 
qui m'attendent," and the terrace where she loved 
to meet her countrymen is still known as the 
" Perche aux Bretons." These soldiers were the 
bodyguard of a hundred gentlemen whom she had 
picked out to attend her, in the same way as she 
had begun the " Court of ladies," the innocent fore- 
runner of the " escadron volant," over which Bran- 
tome waxes so enthusiastic. 

1 Many of the most precious MSS. in the Bibliotheque Na- 
tionale come from this library. 

See Bibl. Nat. MS. No. 5091, in which Jean des Maretz is 
depicted giving the Queen a book. 



loid 159 



' On the 9th of January 15 14, at the age of thirty- 
seven years, Anne died at the Chateau of Blois, to 
the great grief of her husband. Brantome has de- 
scribed the magnificence of her funeral. 

Not long afterwards Louis XII. followed her to 
the tomb, and with his death ends the first part of 
the chateau's history. He left an ineffaceable mark 
upon the place, and the porcupines carved here and 
there upon the walls remind us still of the son of 
Charles d'Orleans. It was here that he transacted 
nearly all the important business of the State, the 
famous Ordonnances of Blois, and the three great 
treaties of 1504. It was here that he was brought 
to recover, in his natal air, whenever illness pressed 
upon him in the more confined atmosphere of the 
capital. 

The love he had for Blois he bequeathed to his 
daughter Claude, the wife of Francis, to whom is no 
doubt due the initiation of those magnificent works 
which were to give a third side to the chateau, and 
to provide the background for the drama that is to 
come, the drama of the sixteenth century that was 
now well on its way. 



c/Sloid 



CHAPTER XIX 

BLOIS (Continued) 

" Sit subitum quodcunque paras, sit caeca futuri 
Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti." 

LUCAN. 

Queen Claude, the daughter of Anne de Bretagne 
and wife of Francis I., is the hnk in the history of 
Blois between the old times and the new. It was 
her fondness for her father's home that persuaded 
the King to build the famous wing of Francis I. 
that was to give shelter after his reign to Marie 
Stuart, and later on to Henry III.; and at her death 
it was left unfinished. Francis left it for Gaston 
d'Orleans to complete in the next century, and 
went off to build the gigantic Chambord in the 
plains of the Sologne — Chambord which might 
have been added to the home of Claude, and made of 
Blois so fair a palace that Versailles would never 
have existed. 

For the next few reigns not much of interest 
happened at the castle. In 1536 Madame Madeleine 
de France was betrothed here to James V. of Scot- 
land, and they were married shortly afterwards in 
Paris. A young page went with them, who had 

163 



164 Old ^outaine 

been given to the Scottish King by the Duke of 
Orleans, after the fashion of the time : it was Ron- 
sard, who stayed in the north two years and six 
months, and came back at the age of sixteen to go 
with De Baif to Germany, before he settled down 
in France as the favourite Court poet of the King. 

Of the imitation of classical authors, for which 
Michelet so severely criticises Ronsard, there is a 
striking example at Blois in 1549, when a 
" tragedy " was performed, which was the latest de- 
velopment of that dramatic instinct which we have 
already had occasion to notice. 

In the museum now attached to the buildings of 
the chateau there is an old plank covered with rude 
paintings and rough verses such as were sung by 
the first players of Mysteries and Sottises whom we 
found at Amboise. There had been a somewhat 
sudden development in these primitive dramatic 
writings; the laxity of public morals, and the de- 
cline in public religion which was emphasised by the 
growing struggles between Huguenots and Catho- 
lics, had produced their inevitable result in the na- 
tional literature; the mystery had been neglected 
for the farce, and a strange compromise had been 
effected between the two, which by 1541 reached 
such a pitch of scandal and disorder that they were 
definitely suppressed by the Government. The 



ioid 165 

' death of the old religious theatre was the signal for 
the rise of the literary theatre under the auspices of 
Ronsard and the Pleiad, and the efforts of these 
pioneers in the dramatic art have been somewhat 
too harshly condemned from a lack of due apprecia- 
tion of their strange position. The old methods 
had been cast aside, and for the time no new ones 
were forthcoming. It was inevitable that the re- 
vival of classical learning, which was then at its 
height, should have pointed out the new way that 
was to be trodden by the dramatic author; so such 
pieces as Cleopdtre, Medee, and Antigone appear, 
mere copies, often bad ones, of the old originals, but 
the best then possible. Not to every age is it given 
to produce a Moliere, who should make a national 
comedy from the old Confreres de la Passion at the 
Hotel de Bourgogne; and this first classical revival 
which began with Jodelle and the rest was strong 
enough to last through Corneille and Racine, until 
Dumas and Hugo startled the literary world with 
the first French romantic drama, the drama which 
first drew its scenes from the history of Touraine, 
from the " Court of Henry HI." at Blois, and the 
" Huguenots " at Chenonceaux. 

Appropriately enough, it was owing to Catherine 
de Medicis that one of these early French adapted 
tragedies was played at Blois. Brantome par- 



166 Old Ooutatne 

ticularly praises it, saying that " M. de Saint Gelais 
composed it, or rather took and stole it from an- 
other, with better ornamentation." ^ 

There were not many fetes at Blois during the 
reign of Henry 11. , and for the greater part of it 
Catherine must bide her time and watch her rival's 
triumph at Chenonceaux; but already the martial 
cure at Meriot, who was better at holding pistols 
and an arquebuse than at intoning prayers, had 
discovered the inconveniences of a Church mili- 
tant upon earth. Claude Haton's Memoires, full 
of details as to weather, crops, and prices, unre- 
liable as records of character or of policy, are yet 
full of compassion for the sufferings of the poor by 
war and by disease. They express plainly and 
simply the common opinions of the time, and show 
very fairly the direction in which afifairs were tend- 
ing. In 1558 he was at Paris and saw the mar- 
riages of Claude de France and Marie Stuart. 

Soon afterwards — 

" Pleurez done la France desolee," 
cry the Memoires, 

" Maudissez le coup de lance, 
Maudissez Lorge qui la branle." 

1 " Sophonisbe, tragedie tres excellente, tant pour I'agre- 
ment que pour le poly lengage, representee et prononcee de- 
vant le roy, en sa ville de Blois," Paris, 1559, in 8vo. 



lotd 167 



Henry II. was dead, and the young King and 
Queen moved their Court to Blois. 

In the new wing of the castle Catherine de 
Medicis with her two young children, the Due 
d'Anjou and Marguerite de Valois, lodged in the 
rooms that were decorated with the device of 
Claude, the wife of Francis I., two C's intertwined 
with lilies and the wings of a swan. The panelling 
of her library, rescued from the decay into which 
it had fallen, still shows traces of the colouring 
which threw into bold relief the exquisite carving 
of its walls; there are two hundred and thirty panels 
here, all different, and each a brilliant example of 
workmanship and design. This cabinet alone 
would be sufificient indication of the luxury of 
decoration lavished by four Valois Courts upon the 
chateau; its solidity is conspicuous in the great 
wall of division which cuts through the whole wing 
like a spinal column, and divides each story into a 
double range of rooms, each large enough, as 
Balzac said, to hold a company of infantry with 
ease. Above the rooms of Catherine de Medicis, 
and with an exactly similar arrangement, were the 
apartments of Francis II. and Marie Stuart, and it 
is during their visit here in 1560 that the drama 
of the Religious Wars, and of the attempts of the 
Lorraines at power, first began to be unfolded. 



168 Uld Ooutaine 

The Guises were at this time in the chateau, the 
Duke Francis and the Cardinal; and though they 
had, like many others of the Court, their own hotel 
in the town, they preferred to watch events from 
close at hand, and were lodged in the rooms of 
Louis XII. above the twisted columns of the en- 
trance; and they had many things to watch, for 
the Loire, then as always, was covered with boats 
sailing from the west and bearing emissaries from 
the Huguenot headquarters, or Guisard spies who 
brought news to the Cardinal; Catherine herself, 
" niece of a pope, mother of four Valois, a Queen 
of France, widow of an ardent enemy of the 
Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, above all a Medi- 
cis," had showed signs of favouring the heretics; 
and the Guises were on the alert for traces of con- 
spiracy, eager to crush once and for all the party 
that opposed them both in religion and in politics. 
But for the present Catherine seemed inclined to 
follow her favourite motto, " Odiate e aspettate," 
and life at the Court went on unwitting of coming 
change, and happy in the pleasure of the two royal 
lovers in their rooms above. We can imagine the 
day on which was first sounded the signal of alarm. 
The courtyard is filled with officers and men-at- 
arms, and the sun just rising above the carved and 
traceried windows of the roof shines on pourpoints 



loid 169 



and slashed trunk-hose, and glitters on the hilts of 
swords; within, all is in the bustle that indicates 
the expected presence of the King, who is soon to 
give his morning greeting to the Court. Mar- 
shalled under the watchful eyes of the Comtesse de 
Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise, are the two 
bands of maids-of-honour, on one side those of 
Catherine, on the other (nearer to the royal apart- 
ments) those of Marie Stuart; talking to them is 
the young Prince Charles, brother of the King, 
dressed in cloth of gold embroidered with black 
flowers, and a short black cloak; behind him is 
his tutor Amyot, and farther on the Chancellor 
Olivier, while Brantome has already begun a con- 
versation with Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the 
maids-of-honour, criticising the poetry of De Ba'if 
and Du Bellay, who had the day before arranged 
a fete for the amusement of the Court. 

Some of the ladies passed the time in reading. 
She who was afterwards to be " la belle Fosseuse "• 
of Henry of Navarre was beginning her education 
early with the Amadis de Gaule, by the Seigneur 
des Essarts; Madame de Guise fingered Boccaccio's 
Celebrated Ladies. Tales of gallantry were at the 
time far more in favour at the Court than books 
upon religious subjects, or even the many political 
pamphlets with which the League and its oppo- 



170 uid (bowcatfie 

nents afterwards flooded the capital and the prov- 
inces. 

But the Huguenot cause was not without its 
representatives even here. Groslot, the servant of 
Jeanne d'Albret, was watching the proceedings; 
Coligny and Chatillon are there too, talking with 
Moret of the visit of Theodore de Beze to Nerac, 
when all whisperings ceased suddenly, as Dayelle, 
the favourite waiting-woman of the Queen, an- 
nounced that their Majesties were entering the 
room. The face of Catherine, grave and sombre, 
almost livid in the daytime though the ivory skin 
lit up well at night, threw into lively contrast the 
fresh pink and white of the youthful and piquant 
Marie Stuart, whose careless gaiety had completely 
captivated the fragile little King, almost crushed 
by the severity of his mother. 

But on this morning at the Court at Blois all 
three seemed equally depressed, for strange news 
had reached them. The Guises, who arranged 
everything, had suddenly given out that the King's 
life was in danger, and he must go for safety to 
Amboise. By degrees the news spread through 
the ranks of attendant courtiers, to the guards who 
waited in the embrasures of the staircase, to the 
men-at-arms below. The assembly in the rooms 
above broke up hastily, and the chateau was 



loid 171 



soon in all the hurry and discomfort of a swift 
departure. 

What passed thereafter at Amboise we know 
already. It was the beginning of the terrible 
thirty years of bloodshed that were to be signalised 
in still more horrible a fashion at the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, and were to stain the very walls 
of Blois with the traces of their cruelty and their 
assassinations. Catherine de Medicis was in her 
element, the country was full of wars and rumors 
of wars, an(^ one by one the actors in the drama fall, 
and their places are taken by others. 

Soon after the battle of Dreux, news reached her 
of the assassination of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot, 
and she wrote at once to the Cardinal of " le mal- 
heureux inconvenient advenu a son frere." Henry, 
the son of the murdered man, was established in all 
his father's rights and dignities. 

The death of the Prince of Conde, too, brought 
another Henry on the scene. The young prince of 
Beam, who had been placed by his mother, Jeanne 
d'Albret, under the care of Caumont la Force dur- 
ing the campaign which ended at Jarnac, was now 
raised to be the head of the Huguenot party, and 
under the guidance of his mother and Coligny soon 
made his influence evident to the anxious plotters 
round the Court of Charles IX, 



172 Uid Oowcalne 

The position had indeed become one of consid- 
erable difficulty, and it was by means of the King's 
sister, Marguerite de Valois, already famous for her 
beauty and her wit, that a " rapprochement " was 
hoped for between the hostile parties. 

At Blois the first negotiations were begun by 
Beauvais, tutor to the young Prince of Navarre, 
who was sent by Jeanne d'Albret to the Court while 
she herself went throughout her estates establish- 
ing the reformed religion, strengthening the Uni- 
versity of Beam, and chasing the Catholic priests 
out of the country. Beauvais came back overjoyed 
with the reception, but, says Bordenaye, " ceux 
qui n'avaient I'entendement opile par les crudites et 
viscosites de I'ambition et de I'avarice avaient ces 
trop grandes caresses pour suspectes." Towards 
the end of 1571 Jeanne d'Albret left her son under 
the care of Beauvais, and travelled by way of Biron 
(which she reached on 21st January in the new 
year) towards Poitiers, where the Pope's legate met 
her coach and passed it without a sign, for the 
Queen of Navarre was in no good odour at the 
Vatican, and Paul V. had very vehemently ex- 
claimed against the marriage of a son of this de- 
termined heretic with a Valois princess. But 
Charles IX. had expressed his own opinion in 
language even more vigorous than the Pope's, and 



loid 173 



every preparation was made to receive Jeanne 
d'Albret at the Court. The first interview took 
place at Chenonceaux, but from Tours (which she 
had only reached by the loth of February) the 
Queen writes to her son of the difficulties of her 
position. " Je vous assure que je suis en grande 
peine, car Ton me brave extremement et j'ai toutes 
les patiences du monde." She sends him news of 
the Princess Marguerite, and of her own niece then 
betrothed to the young Prince of Conde, with 
various warnings as to the customs of the Court; 
but it is from Blois that her indignation really 
breaks out, at what she sees around her. Writing 
from the chateau on the 8th of March 1572,^ she 
complains bitterly of the cynical deceit and care- 
lessness with which her advances are received. " I 
am so shamefully used," she cries, " that you may 
well say my patience passes that of Griselda. . . . 
Madame (Marguerite) is beautiful, witty, and 
graceful, but brought up in the most terribly cor- 
rupted company; there is not one here but is 

1 The beginning of this now famous letter explains the long 
time that was taken over the journey. " Mon fils," she writes, 
" je suis en mal d'enfant, et en telle extremite que, si je n'eusse 
pourvu, j'eusse ete extremement tourmentee." It increases 
our admiration for her strength of resolution and courage 
that these difficult negotiations should have been carried on 
during great bodily distress, and in much mental trouble wil- 
fully caused her by Catherine. 



174 Old (Dowcalne 

tainted with it. Your cousin, the Marquise, is so 
changed that there is not a vestige of religion left 
in her save that she never attends mass. For nothing 
in the world would I have you living here; there is 
my reason for your marrying and taking yourself 
and your wife out of this corruption, for it is far 
worse than ever I believed. It is no longer the men 
who ask the women, but the women ask the men. 
If you were here yourself you would only escape 
by some remarkable mercy of God. I send you a 
favour to wear beneath your ear since you are now 
for sale, and some studs for your cap." 

Marguerite herself would send no messages to her 
betrothed, but otherwise was respectful enough to 
the mother, who admits to Beauvais that the prin- 
cess " has a fine figure, but laces herself very tightly, 
and uses so much artificial help for her complexion 
that I am grieved to think how she will spoil it; 
but at this Court women paint as much as in Spain. 
You would scarcely believe how pretty my own 
daughter is in these surroundings. Every one at- 
tacks her religion, but she holds her own and gives 
in not a whit. Every one loves her." 

Coming fresh from her edicts against gaming 
and sumptuous apparel in the south, Jeanne 
d'Albret was hardly of a mind to appreciate the 
over-dressed princess, whom Brantome describes 



told 175 



with so much enthusiasm at this time, taking part 
in the procession during the " Paques Fleuries " at 
Blois, and resplendent in a robe of cloth of gold 
which had been given by the Sultan to M. Grand- 
champ, and by him presented to Madame Margue- 
rite. " Nor is this all," continues the same chroni- 
cler, " for she walked in her place in the procession 
with her face uncovered, so as not to deprive men 
during so great a festival of its gracious light, and 
seemed more beautiful still as she held in her hand 
her sceptre (as all our Queens are wont to do) with 
a queenly dignity, with a grace half royal and half 
tender." 

The fetes kept up during the whole visit were of 
unusual magnificence, and were doubtless meant to 
show how much more brilliantly the Catholics 
could live than their Protestant opponents. The 
King was no unready pupil of his crafty mother, 
and Coligny himself had been enticed from La 
Rochelle to see the splendour of the Court.^ 

1 There is an interest for Englishmen in the family of Co- 
ligny, apart from the admiration which his character and life 
must always arouse among a nation which (whatever its other 
faults) were certainly averse to the doubtful methods of policy 
in favour among Coligny' s enemies. His ancestor was Gas- 
pard de Coligny, Marshal of France under Charles VIII., 
Louis XII., and Francis I., and through his uncle, Montmo- 
rency, he was connected with the house of Nassau. William 
of Nassau (the Silent) was father of the great General 



176 Old Oowcalne 

At last the marriage contract was drawn up, and 
in June the Queen of Navarre was in Paris. On 
the loth of that month she was dead, being only 
forty-four years old. It may well have been the 
poisoned gloves that killed her, as tradition tells, 
for Maitre Rene, Catherine's instrument in such 
delicate situations, was equal to gracefully remov- 
ing any one who was at all obnoxious to the Queen- 
mother. 

Jeanne d'Albret was too much given to taking 
things " au grand serieux " for this careless and 
unscrupulous age, her religion was too much of a 
reality for the polished mockery of Courts, and as 
like Coligny she would not bend, like him she must 
be broken. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 
which the admiral was murdered, took place very 
shortly after these events. 

Upon the terrace beyond the main building of the 
castle is the tower with the letters " Uraniae Sac- 
rum " inscribed upon its entrance, in which Cather- 
ine consulted the stars with her astronomer, and 
with the superstition so common to minds of her 
peculiar nature, inquired the influence of the plan- 
ets upon her various schemes. Here she plotted the 
accession of her son, the Duke of Anjou, to the 

Maurice, grandfather of Turenne, and great-grandfather of 
William III. of England. 



loid 177 



-Crown of Poland, and negotiated, though happily 
with no success, for his marriage with the English 
Queen, Elizabeth; ^ here she dreamed of the carni- 
val of death that was to run riot in the streets of 
Paris, of the murder of Coligny, of Navarre, of 
Conde, of all who ever crossed her path — horrors 
which her son's mind was not strong enough to 
bear. 

In 1574 began the fourth reign in which this 
woman's sinister influence was to play a part, the 
reign which brings to its crisis the history of the 
Chateau of Blois. 

Her son Henry had hurried from Cracow on the 
death of Charles IX., had gone through the dis- 
gusting mockery of penitence in the streets of 
Avignon, and was beginning his cruel and dissi- 
pated career, in which enough of frivolous and ex- 
aggerated religion was mingled to rob his care- 
lessness of its one excuse.^ 

1 Elizabeth seems to have been considered a fair mark at 
this time for all royal matrons with marriageable sons. 

There was a scheme afoot at one time to marry her to Henry 
of Navarre, and join England, France, and Navarre in one 
great Empire that should recall the dominions of the Ange- 
vins. Smith and Throckmorton, the English ambassadors, 
were in Touraine in 1571, and were spoken to on this strange 
business. 

2 " Cette vie lache et meprisable," says Vitet with as much 
truth as force, " dont une moitie etait consacree aux plus 

Vol. II.— 13 



178 uLd (joiLzaine 

There is a small staircase leading from the main 
buildings of the castle into the great hall in which, 
in 1576, Henry III. convoked the first States-Gen- 
eral of Blois. Henry, the famous Due de Guise, 
was at the height of his power; with the conscious- 
ness that Spain was at its back, he was prepared 
with the League to combat to the full the powers 
of the King, The famous Catholic League had 
been thought of so far back as 1562 by the Cardinal 
de Lorraine at the Council of Trent; it got its first 
strength from the Press, and from secret associa- 
tions in the capital; indeed, although 1572 had 
given a bloody proof of its existence, the League, 
until 1576, remained almost a secret society, with 
meetings such as that into which the reckless 
Chicot penetrated and gave Brother Gorenflot so 
great a reputation for his oratory. 

But at this time they felt strong enough to throw 
off the mask, and the King was fairly terrified at 
the revelation of the extent of their plans. It must 
have been a sore surprise for the Guises when the 
King, in a moment of sudden resolution, declared 
that he himself would head the famous League; 
and we may be sure that all the Court who 

honteuses debauches et I'autre aux plus ridicules devotions." 
The best that can be said for his melancholy culture and re- 
finement is said in Dumas' Quarantc Cinq, and the rest. 



BSalL of Stato-fJenezaL, cBlotd 



told 179 



dared were laughing at the great man's discomfi- 
ture/ 

The King's resolve is described by his sister 
Marguerite, who was present at the meeting of the 
states of Blois; and (says her usual ardent admirer 
Brantome) the assembly were even more occupied 
in studying her royal charms than in listening to 
the excellent discourses of the King. As a matter 
of fact the King spoke very well and with much 
dignity when occasion required it, as it did certainly 
now, for Guise was only put on his mettle by the 
temporary check, and was soon moving every influ- 
ence in his power towards his one fixed aim — the 
King's abasement and his own advance. 

D'Aubigne describes how these first estates at 
Blois dragged wearily on, with demands for redress 
of grievances ^ alternating with royal complaints of 
lack of money, and here and there a murder, to 
diversify proceedings, in the castle grounds. At 
last the sessions were over, and while, for the sixth 
time, the Religious Wars began in the South Prov- 
inces, within the courtyard of the chateau the 
" mignons " of the King, the D'Epernons and Joy- 
euses of Dumas' famous drama, were swaggering 

1 " J'ai detrone mon cousin de Guise (said Henry to Mor- 
villier), me voila roi des ligueurs a sa place." 

2 Which had one good result, the "Edit de Blois," a sound 
measure of reform much needed. 



180 did "S. 



owcaine 



in their short cloaks and long rapiers, and some- 
times having serious fights in the midst of the dis- 
sipation of the Court. 

Thus, Caylus, Maugiron, Livarot, and St. Megrin 
were beaten by D'Entragues, Schomberg, and 
Ribeirac, in the famous duel that is immortalised 
in " La Dame de Montsoreau." The King's grief 
for his favourites was overwhelming, and he built 
to their memory a magnificent sepulchre, which 
was knocked down by the people of the capital 
soon afterwards. Thus, the Sieur de Saint Sulpice 
met his death at the hands of the Vicomte de Tours 
behind the archways in the moonlight, while the 
courtiers were dancing in the brilliant rooms above, 
and the King, effeminate enough already, dressed 
as a woman, was simpering at the jests of the first 
Italian comedians who had replaced the stormy 
councillors in the great hall of the castle. 

Of the private life of the Court at this time, of 
the exploits of the " mignons," of Bussy d'Amboise, 
and the rest, of the King's maudlin affections, his 
Httle dogs, his mummeries, his effeminacy, his nau- 
seating mockeries of holiness, the chronicles of the 
time are full; and they are not pleasant reading. 
Small wonder that so many of Montaigne's essays, 
first printed about 1581, breathe discouragement 
and weariness of soul at all this purposeless and 



loid 181 



endless vice and debauchery — this ghastly careless- 
ness of life and of its ending, which is the distin- 
guishing mark of the times of the last Valois. 

But even the indolence of the King was at last 
roused by the startling events that were in progress. 
On the first day of March 1587 L'Estoile chroni- 
cles the news of Marie Stuart's execution; tidings 
followed fast of the gathering of the Armada that 
was to be hurled against the English heretics, and 
the result of the struggle was watched eagerly both 
by the Guises and the King; the King, in Chartres, 
was in fact in deadly fear in spite of his new body- 
guard of D'Epernon's Quarante-Cinq, for, con- 
trary to all orders, De Guise had entered Paris, the 
city had risen in his favour, the very streets been 
barricaded at the least sign of opposition, and he 
was actually on his way to demand his appointment 
as Constable at the coming session of the States 
at Blois, which the King was unwillingly obliged 
to summon in October 1588. 

Of the three divisions of the Parliament, only 
in the noblesse could Henry count on a majority, 
the Guises held the clergy, and the enormous ma- 
jority of 150 out of 191 in the Tiers Etat. 

The sitting did not promise to be very gratifying 
to the royal pride, and the King's mind showed 
traces of irresolution that did not go unmarked by 



182 did ^0 



utatne 



his mother and those who watched him carefully. 
He had dismissed Cheverny, Villeroi and his old 
ministers, and taken on Montholon, to every one's 
surprise, with Ruze, Revol, and others whom he 
hoped to influence as he liked. A solemn proces- 
sion was then started round the town, of all the 
elected members and the councillors of the Court; 
at last the first sitting was definitely fixed for the 
middle of October. The appearance of the great 
Salle des Etats has been often described; its walls 
were covered with tapestry, and its pillars twisted 
with gold lilies upon violet velvet; between the 
third and fourth was placed a dais with a throne, 
by which sat the Queen and the Queen-mother. 
Strong barriers all round kept the spectators at a 
distance, and on a chair within them sat De Guise, 
in his white satin doublet, watching keenly all the 
men of his own party ranged in lines before him. 
At last he rose, and mounting the private staircase 
to the castle rooms, came back with the King. 

The speech from the Throne was unexpectedly 
firm and created a great sensation, but its effect 
was somewhat spoilt by Montholon's tedious dis- 
cussion, which wandered from Solomon and the 
Druids to general exhortations to the assembly, and 
by the time the Archbishop of Bourges had men- 
tioned Nestor and Ulysses, and even dragged in the 



lold 183 



examples of Nebuchadnezzar and Artaxerxes, the 
patience of the house was well-nigh exhausted. 
The King's friends had done him Httle good, and 
the Duke of Guise's popularity became more pro- 
nounced than ever; he was proud to excess before, 
he now became violent and disrespectful. It was 
clear to the anxious King that his conduct was 
Httle short of treasonable; and the jests which the 
great duke pitilessly flung to all his followers, 
about the King being more fitted for a cloister than 
a Court, at last drove Henry's naturally timid and 
irresolute character to take a desperate revenge. 

Personal enmities have always had much to do 
with the crises of French history, and they were 
not lacking now to add one more touch to the 
gloomy picture whose background was shadowed 
with the struggles of fanaticism and persecution, 
only relieved by the lurid lights from burning vil- 
lages throughout the desolated realm of France.^ 
The Cardinal de Guise talked of making a crown 
for Henry with a dagger's point, and the wicked 

1 There were horrible cruelties practised on both sides. See 
the Theatrum crudelitatum nostri temporis, Anvers, 1587, 4to, 
where the Huguenots are represented torturing men and wom- 
en with cruelties unspeakable. 

The Oldenhurgisches Chronicon, folio, 1599, shows the re- 
prisals of the other side — confused scenes of pillage and 
murder, with Catholic soldiers sacking the villages of the 
Huguenots. 



184 Old Oowcaine 

little Duchesse de Montpensier, with her pack of 
cards in her gibeciere, carried on the other side of 
her girdle the golden scissors with which she had 
sworn to cut the tonsure for the King when he was 
made a monk. 

Anne d'Este was in the Guises' lodgings, the 
grand-daughter of Louis XII. and mother of Duke 
Henry, who married the Due de Nemours after 
her first husband's death; his wife, too, Catherine 
de Cleves, only left Blois on the 17th of December 
that her child might be born at Paris. His son 
Charles, Prince de Joinville, stayed with him all the 
time, and spent his days in matches at tennis and 
flirting with the maids-of-honour. All over the 
castle grounds the pages of the rival factions were 
perpetually quarrelling, and constant duels, in de- 
fiance of Court etiquette, took place in the gardens 
and the town. At every turn the King saw Gui- 
sard faces, watching him and hating him, and every 
day brought fresh humihations; like Louis XL, he 
veiled his projects in a still deeper cloak of exag- 
gerated and loathsome cant and superstition; he 
even took mass with De Guise on the 4th of De- 
cember, and on the i8th entered with unusual 
gaiety into the festivities at the marriage of Chris- 
tina of Lorraine. The Duke affected to believe 
the hypocritical expressions of the King, or passed 



ioid 185 



him altogether as beneath contempt, but that 
very night the murder was first actually spoken 
of. 

Henry's accomplices knew the strength of the 
man with whom they had to deal; arrangements 
were made to isolate him from his numerous suite, 
and a murderer was found courageous enough to 
strike the blow. 

So much ambition and so much contempt could 
only have one end, but the pride of Le Balafre 
would only listen to the bolder spirits among his 
friends; confident in himself and despising his 
royal enemy, he rejected all the warnings which 
were showered upon him; a note in his dinner 
napkin was thrown away unread, and all the vague 
prophecies with which the air was full were for- 
gotten, or passed over as the idle tales of quacks 
and prophecy-mongers. 

At a supper in the Guises' rooms the position 
was talked over; the Cardinal and the Archbishop 
of Lyons were there, De Neuilly, Chapelle Marteau, 
and without doubt the Duchesse de Montpensier 
in her white damask, with the pink and green 
embroidery, and her long skirt hiding the slight 
defect in one leg. The Duke's mother, too, was full 
of anxiety at the constant warnings that reached 
her. 



186 utd (jowcalne 

" Paris conjure un grand meurtre commettre, 
Blois lui fera sortir son plein effet." 

" La cour sera en un bien facheux trouble, 
Le grand de Blois son bon ami tuera," 

were two of the numberless doggerels that every 
one was quoting at the time. The Duke was 
again and again besought to beware of Christmas, 
" for before the year dies you will be dead," had 
said the prophet. 

But as if his destruction had already been fated 
by a higher power, his usual prudence seemed for 
the time to have been cast aside, and even the 
prayers of his mistress, the lovely Charlotte de 
Sauves, Marquise de Noirmoutier, could not pre- 
vail on him either to strike the first blow or to leave 
the Court that was so full of danger for him, and 
the town that was notoriously hostile to the League. 

Before the breaking of the storm the King kept 
outwardly very calm, and occupied his leisure in 
obtrusively pious celebrations of the masses before 
Christmas. On the evening of the 22d the last 
arrangements were made. 

At four o'clock the next morning the King, who 
had not slept all night, was roused by Du Halde. 
Several of the Quarante-Cinq were hidden in the 
staircase leading to the King's "cabinet neuf ; " 



loid 187 



others were disposed in convenient hiding-places 
along the passages that led from the Council cham- 
ber to the royal apartments; others were put in 
readiness to secure the persons of the Cardinal and 
the Archbishop of Lyons as soon as the blow had 
fallen. 

The King walked nervously from room to room 
in the darkness of the December morning, seeing 
that all was ready, and listening to the chanting 
of the monks in the alcove hard at hand, who were 
praying for the success of this cowardly assassina- 
tion. The members of the Council had been ex- 
horted, the last words of encouragement and warn- 
ing given to the Quarante-Cinq, swords and dag- 
gers even had been served out to those who had 
none, the ministers were beginning to assemble in 
the great hall beyond, and still the Duke came not. 

De Guise, all unconscious of the imminent peril 
he was in, had spent the night with the fascinating 
Madame de Sauves, and only left her at about 
three in the morning for his own rooms. 

It was after eight o'clock when his valets aroused 
him, saying that the King was on the point of 
leaving the chateau, and the Council waited. He 
walked across the courtyard of the castle to the 
royal apartments, beneath a dark and threatening 
sky, " Ce ciel sombre et triste," that was to over- 



188 Uid Oowcal 



ine 



shadow the last moments of his Hfe. Upon the 
terrace La Salle and D'Aubercourt begged him to 
go back, and he crumpled in his fingers the ninth 
note of warning since the night. 

At the foot of the beautiful staircase/ beneath 
the statues and the twining leaves, is a man-at- 
arms, the Sieur de Larchant, who entreats the 
nobleman in power for some favour for the Scottish 
Guard from the King himself, and as the Duke as- 
cends, the steps behind him are closed up with a 
double file of soldiers, and all the castle gates are 
bolted. A last message sent him in a handker- 
chief failed of its purpose, and in another moment 
he is in the Council chamber, pale and cold with 
the night air, warming himself at the great fire, 
eating some plums, and jesting with the courtiers 
waiting with him. 

The pale face of Revol, the Secretary of State, 
just then showed through the open door, and the 
message came that His Majesty awaited the Duke 
in the Cabinet vieux. De Guise put some of his 
plums in a small box in his pocket, threw the rest 
upon the table for the councillors, and with an 
" Adieu, messieurs," to them all, left the Council 

1 Mezeray (iii. 734, fol. 1685) says that Chicot was on the 
steps, rubbing an old " alumelle " against the window, and 
murmuring, " He j'ay Guise." 



loid 189 



chamber; the Sieur de Nambu shut the door be- 
hind him. 

The miserable King was not in the room to 
which De Guise had been summoned, and which 
lay through a narrow passage to the left, but 
waiting in the Cabinet de travail at the other end 
of his apartments, trembling behind a door until 
his cut-throats should have completed their task. 

Turning to the left as he came out, the Duke 
has reached the end of the room that is crowded 
with his murderers, though he knows it not, for he 
has bowed to all of them, and gone his way 
towards the Cabinet vieux; there is a pressure on 
his foot, perhaps a warning, but it comes too late, 
and the assassins are close round him. 

With a strange feeling of oppression and un- 
certainty he was half turning back, with one hand 
on his beard, when he felt the first dagger stroke 
upon his neck. It was Montfery who grasped his 
arm, crying, " Traitor, thou shalt die ! " At the 
same time his legs were seized by Des Effranats, 
Saint Malines stabbed him in the chest, and Loig- 
nac thrust him with his rapier through the loins; 
but powerful still in his last agony, and with a loud 
cry for help,^ he dragged his murderers, strug- 

1 " Le premier coup qu'il receut luy faisant regorger le sang 
dans le gosier, il ne put jetter qu'un grand soupir qui fut 
entendu avec horreur de ceux qui etaient au conseil " (Meze- 



190 Old ^outatne 

gling, from one end of the room to the other, 
staggering with arms outstretched, dull eyes with- 
in their staring sockets, and mouth half-opened, 
as one already dead. 

At last he fell beside the curtains of the bed. 
Then came out the King, and with all the meanness 
of his pitiful nature spurned with his heel the face 
of the dying man — a terrible reprisal this, for the 
cruelty of De Guise himself to the gray hairs of 
Coligny; and the last sigh of the great duke, who 
rendered up his strong spirit slowly and with 
almost unconquerable efifort, was received by the 
courtier who was kneeling down to rifle the pock- 
ets of the corpse; it was covered with a gray cloak, 
and a cross of straw was thrown upon it. 

In the confusion that ensued among the crowd 
in the ante-chamber De Guise's relatives were 
seized, and the tragedy was completed when his 
body and that of the murdered Cardinal his brother 
had been burnt within the castle, and their ashes 
scattered on the waters of the Loire. 

Catherine de Medicis died a few days afterwards, 

and within a year the King was murdered. The 

sixteenth century ended red with the blood of its 

chief actors, and the stage was cleared again for a 

new reign. 

ray, iii. 734, fol. 1685). For further details see authorities 
mentioned in the Appendix. 



emif, Jjnc cie (jtuAi 



CHAPTER XX 

BLOIS (Concluded) 

" Fy de la Ligue et de son nom, 
Fy de la Lorraine estrangere, 
Vive le Roi, Vive Bourbon, 
Vive la France, nostre mere." 

" For the transgressions of a land many are the princes 
thereof." 

With the murder of the Balafre the War of the 
Three Henrys closed, for now that one was dead, 
the other two fell into each other's arms and com- 
bined to crush the party of the League, which 
still writhed and tried to sting, although its head 
was gone. 

A meeting between the King and Henry of 
Navarre took place at Tours, and their combined 
army then moved towards Paris; but Henry HI, 
was destined never to enter his capital again, and 
was stabbed by Jacques Clement at St, Cloud. 
With the new reign that begins, the real history 
of Touraine is over; the Court is seldom in its 

palaces again; but there are still a few more events 
Vol. II.— 13 193 



194 did '^O 



utaine 



which are of interest before the story of the Chateau 
of Blois is done. 

After Gabrielle d'Estrees had died and Mar- 
guerite de Valois been divorced, Henry IV. 
brought Marie de Medicis from Italy as his wife. 
Her magnificent reception and subsequent career 
are portrayed in the glowing colours of Rubens's 
great series of complimentary historical pictures; 
but the connection of Marie with the Castle of 
Blois was only of the most humiliating description. 

The Vert Galant had been stabbed by Ravaillac 
in the very midst of his pursuit of the lovely 
Princess of Conde, in the course of which he had 
threatened to set all Europe by the ears for the 
sake of one woman, as Buckingham was to do after 
him; and during the reign of the next King, the 
sombre Medicean Louis XIII., the position of the 
Queen-mother had become one of very considera- 
ble difficulty. Her embarrassments, political and 
otherwise, at last landed her in the Chateau of Blois, 
and there the King's favourite, De Luynes, showed 
every intention of keeping her shut up and out of 
harm's way. The tortuous designs of Richelieu, 
who had accompanied her, were not yet clear; and 
he was ordered to leave her household and retire 
to Avignon. The position of Marie de Medicis 
became more and more intolerable, for De Roissy, 



lotd 195 



the governor of the castle, seemed to take pleasure 
in making her captivity as odious as possible. De 
Luynes set his mind at rest, and proceeded with his 
own affairs at Paris, confident that the Queen- 
mother would trouble him no more. But the nu- 
merous political executions, which were at this time 
constantly taking place, so roused the indignation 
of the people, that the nobles resolved to take ad- 
vantage of the crisis and liberate the Queen- 
mother. 

The Dukes of Rohan and Montbazon resolved to 
effect a reconciliation between the King and Marie 
de Medicis at all costs. Her friends the Concinis 
were working for the royal captive, and they had 
sent the Abbe Ruccelai to manage her escape from 
Blois. That this was no easy matter is shown by 
the fact that it took two years to make the neces- 
sary preparations. On 22d January 1619 D'Eper- 
non left Metz with a hundred well-armed men, his 
guards and personal attendants, his jewels, and 
eight thousand pistoles. His letters to the Queen 
were carried by treachery to De Luynes, who 
fortunately disregarded them, and after much un- 
easiness Marie heard at last that D'Epernon was 
at Loches, where a refuge had been arranged for 
her. 

On the 2 1st of February 1619 a certain Cadillac 



196 did '=B. 



ouzatne 



was walking at midnight across the bridge, when 
he met some of the Queen's friends who had been 
sent out to say that all was ready. They all went 
to the foot of the wall in which her window opened, 
where much agitated talking could be heard. 
After great hesitation the Comte de Brienne ap- 
peared down a rope-ladder, and Marie de Medicis 
after him, in an attitude more calculated for safety 
than for that dignity with which she had been por- 
trayed by Rubens. One ladder was enough for 
the poor Queen, who had had great difficulty in 
getting through the window, and was accompanied 
by only a single waiting-woman; the rest of the 
descent from the platform to the ditch of the cas- 
tle was made upon a cloak spread out upon the 
slope. Friends were waiting at the bottom, and 
walked her quickly ofif, one upon each side; but 
no carriage was to be seen. After a moment of 
intense anxiety it was found hiding in a side street; 
then the royal jewels had been forgotten. More 
suspense till they were recovered, dropped in the 
haste of escaping, beneath the castle walls. At 
last the carriage started, and Marie de Medicis was 
free to begin plotting again with her clumsy Gaston 
against the astute and omnipotent Richelieu. 

Gaston had neither the skill to foil him nor the 
courage to assassinate him, and no Aramis or Por- 



told 197 



thos was at hand to help, for Monsieur d'Orleans 
had an evil notoriety for abandoning his friends to 
their fate without lifting- a finger to save them; so 
he failed as he was bound to do, and found him- 
self sent into exile, after the Fronde had given the 
jfinal death-blow to his schemes, to the Chateau 
of Blois. 

Here, in 1635, he was living with his solemn 
Court; and Mademoiselle de Montpensier his 
daughter, " La grande Mademoiselle," as she was 
called, gives a pitilessly accurate account of the 
wearisome etiquette of the Duke of Orleans' house- 
hold. " Monsieur dissertoit, distinguoit, Hesitoit 
comme a I'ordinaire." ^ After both the King and 
Queen had followed Richelieu to the tomb, the un- 
lucky Gaston heard once more the shouts of " Vive 
le Roi ! " which had grown so distasteful to his en- 
vious ears, and the quiet of his Court was inter- 
rupted by the visit of the young King Louis. 

At the end of April 1644 John Evelyn had come 
down the Loire by boat from Orleans to Blois, and 
his diary is worth quoting to describe for us the 
state of the chateau at this time. They arrived in 
the evening, and noticed the " stately stone bridge 
on which is a pyramid with an inscription. At the 

1 Compare De Retz: " Monsieur n'agissait jamais que quand 
il etait presse, et Fremont I'appelait ' I'interlocutaire income.' " 



198 Old ^outaine 

entrance of the castle," he continues, " is a stone 
statue of Lewis XII. on horseback as large as Hfe, 
under a Gothic state/ Under this is a very wide 
payre of gates nailed full of wolves and wild boars' 
heads. Behind the castle the present Duke Gas- 
tion (sic) had begun a faire building through 
which we walked into a large garden, esteemed for 
its furniture one of the fairest, especially for simples 
and exotic plants, in which he takes extraordinary 
delight. On the right hand is a long gallery, full 
of ancient statues and inscriptions, both of marble 
and brasse; the length, 300 paces, divides the 
garden into higher and lower grounds, having a 
very noble fountain. . . . From hence we pro- 
ceeded with a friend of mine through the adjoining 
forest to see if we could meete any wolves, which 
are here in such numbers that they often come and 
take children out of the very streetes; yet will not 
the duke, who is sov'raigne here, permite them to 
be destroyed. . . . Bloys is a town where the 
language is exactly spoken; the inhabitants very 
courteous; the ayre so good, that it is the ordinary 
nursery of the King's children." 

1 This is the statue that was destroyed in the Revolution. 
The old inscription ran — 

" Hie ubi natus erat dextro Ludovicus Olympo 
Sumpsit honorata regia sceptra manu ; 
Felix quae tanti fulsit lux nuncia Regis 
Gallica non alio principe digna fuit." 



Loid 199 



Evelyn came too soon to see the streets of the 
town decorated for the entry of the young King 
Louis XIV., the great State carriages, huge 
machines of wood and leather with enormous nails, 
Genoa velvet curtains and wide wheels; to watch 
the musketeers in their brilliant uniform, the light 
blue cosaque with a great star on breast and back, 
the long-plumed hat, and high soft boots to the 
knee. The gay procession goes laughing on to the 
castle, and from the windows in the court above us, 
which had just been filled with the terrible shadows 
of the murdered Guises, it was a relief to hear the 
whispers of that roguish Montalais as she pointed 
out the young Vicomte de Bragelonne to Louise 
de la Valliere. Mazarin was adding up accounts 
in his bedroom on the other side, and the exiled 
EngHsh King was asking D'Artagnan the way to 
Louis XIV.'s apartments. 

But the visit did not last long. Mademoiselle 
tells us the Court were bored to death, as well they 
might be; and the King was soon away to meet his 
Spanish bride, without a thought that the young 
maid-of-honour he had seen at Blois was one day 
to hold so tender a place in his impressionable royal 
heart. 

This was the last of the splendour of Blois. Gas- 
ton returned to his solemnity and his gardening, 



200 did '^, 



owcaine 



and after his death in 1660 the whole place was 
dismantled. 

Arthur Young, passing it in 1787, could still be 
shown the details of the Guises' murder, and his 
eminently practical reflections thereupon are worth 
transcribing. " The character of the period," says 
he, " and of the men that figured in it, were alike 
disgusting. Bigotry and ambition equally dark, 
insidious, and bloody, allow no feelings of regret. 
The parties could hardly be better employed than 
in cutting each other's throats." So far our honest 
agriculturist, who happily finds much soil suited 
to his taste farther on in the Sologne plains, and 
leaves Blois to be still further defaced by the Rev- 
olution which followed hard upon this peaceful 
visit. 

In the terrible devastations of 1793 Blois suffered 
like the rest for its royal recollections, and was as 
usual converted into barracks; in 1871 it served 
as an ambulance for the wounded in the Franco- 
Prussian war; and finally it is restored to-day with 
an abundance of care and thought worthy of the 
structure which holds so many memories. The 
rooms are even too vividly restored, as we have 
noticed, with brilliant colourings on ceiling and on 
floor, and gorgeous tapestries on all the walls; but 
they only need kindly time to soften them again, 



c/Slold 



201 



and they are peopled for ever with the shadows of 
their history. 

But much as there is for the traveller to see in 
the great Chateau of Blois, he must by no means 
leave the town with only the royal palace explored. 
He will find numerous churches all well worth his 
visiting; he will see, most beautiful of all, the 
Hotel d'Alluye, where Florimond Robertet, the 
famous secretary, lived, and from the gardens that 
slope downwards to the river he will see the other 
bank of the stream, the country of the Sologne, and 
the bridge that points him on to Chambord, where 
Porthos, kindly giant, might have found a home, 
when Bracieux close by became too small for him. 

The history with which these pages have had too 
hastily to deal is now brought to its farthest point. 
From chateau to chateau we have followed it till 
the chain that began with the Plantagenets at 
Chinon is broken with the murder of the Balafre 
at Blois. The seventeenth century is the century 
of the intrigues of Paris, the age of Versailles and 
Fontainebleau, and Touraine is all but neglected 
by the Court. Yet it is impossible to leave Tou- 
raine without visiting the gigantic Chambord, 
without glancing, though but for a moment, at a 
few more of the noble houses scattered through the 
province, without finishing the brief sketch of the 



202 did %. 



outatne 



central town of Tours which was begun earlier in 
this book. 

These last things, then, we have left to do, and 
then bid the traveller wander at his will^ 

1 Nearly all the notes from which the foregoing chapters 
were written were taken during the summer and autumn of 
1890. A few changes noticed on a short visit in 1891 will be 
found in the Appendix. At the present moment (December 
1891) I hear that Chenonceaux has at last actually found a 
purchaser; but there is a loss to record as well; the Abbey 
of Cormery has been all but completely ruined by the storms. 



(okambozd 



CHAPTER XXI 

CHAMBORD 

" Ledict bastiment estoit cent fois plus magnifique que n'est 
Bonivet ne Chambourg ne Chantilly : car en icellui estoient 
neuf mille trois cents trente et deux chambres, chascune garnie 
de arriere chambre, cabinet, garderobe, chapelle, et issue en 
une grande salle." — La vie tres horrHique du grand Gargantua, 
cap. liii. 

The road that leads from Blois to Chambord 
crosses the Loire by a fine stone bridge, which the 
inscription sets forth to be the first public work of 
Louis Philippe. 

For some distance the rails of a small tramway- 
followed the road by which our carriage was slowly 
rolling towards the level plains of the Sologne, but 
we gradually left such uncompromising signs of 
activity, and came into a flat country of endless 
vineyards, with here and there a small plaster tower 
showing its slated roof above the low green clusters 
of the vines. ^ We passed through several villages, 

1 These towers may very possibly be modern erections con- 
nected with the cultivation of these enormous and apparently 
uninhabited regions, but they are very like the old watch- 

205 



206 Old ^^ 



outattie 



whose inhabitants that day seemed to have but one 
care upon their minds, Hke the famous Scilly 
Islanders, to gain a precarious livelihood by taking 
in each other's washing. On every bush and briar 
fluttered the household linen and the family apparel, 
of various textures and in different states of dis- 
repair; and with that strict observance of utility 
which is the chief characteristic of the French 
peasant, the inevitable blouses of faded blue were 
being blown into shapeless bundles even along the 
railings of the churchyard tombs. 

At last we came to an old moss-grown wall, and 
through a broken gateway entered what is called 
the Park of Chambord. There is very little of it 
to be seen now, the trees have been ruthlessly cut 
down and mutilated, and of the wild boars which 
Francis I. was so fond of hunting there is left only 
the ghostly quarry that Thibault of Champagne 
chases through the air, while the sound of his 
ghostly horn echoes down the autumn night as the 
phantom pack sweeps by to Montfrault.^ 

towers which M. Prosper Merimee reproduces from a fifteenth- 
century MS., showing the beacons that flamed from its roof, 
while watchdogs beneath are couched behind an encircling 
hedge of wattles. 

1 Called in the country the " Chasse du comte Thibault " (le 
Tricheur), or the " Chasse Machabee." Touraine has also 
its " danse macabre," the " chasse du roi Hugon." In Poitou 
there is the " chasse Galerie," with many other examples for 



Gliamhozd 207 

The woods that inspired such graceful reflections 
in Pelisson's letter to Mademoiselle de Scudery 
(1668) have little left of the romantic now; indeed 
when Arthur Young drove through them a century 
ago the only reflections they suggest to him are 
" that if the King of France ever formed the idea 
of establishing one compleat and perfect farm under 
the turnip culture of England, here is the place for 
it." And Paul Louis Courier would have thor- 
oughly agreed with him. 

At the end of a sufficiently long avenue, the very 
ghost of an avenue, which only showed more deso- 
lation upon either hand as it advanced, could be 
seen at last what seemed a village in the air. Grad- 
ually the village showed its foundations on the solid 
earth, and we were soon beneath the shadow of the 
enormous towers of Chambord, towers of immense 
girth yet with a somewhat squat expression, which 
we found out afterwards was the result of the dis- 
proportionate elaboration of the upper parts of the 
building. There are thirteen great staircases in 
this wilderness of hewn stone, not to mention the 
numberless smaller ones, and four hundred and 
more rooms of various sizes; the resulting impres- 
sion, though we were spared from seeing more 

the comparative mythologist of the widespread story of the 
Spectre Huntsman. 



208 6Ld "S. 



outatne 



than about a quarter, was that of a vast and com- 
fortless barrack, and as all its sixteenth-century art 
treasures had perished ,with the rest of the furniture 
and fittings in the vast bonfire of the Revolution, 
the great empty rooms had even less chance than 
was perhaps fair of showing how far their size was 
equalled by their comfort. 

It is impossible for the uninstructed mind to 
grasp the plan or method of this mass of architect- 
ure; yet it is unsatisfactory to give it up, with Mr. 
Henry James, " as an irresponsible, insoluble laby- 
rinth." M. Viollet le Due, with a sympathetic de- 
nial of any extreme and over-technical admiration, 
gives just that intelligible account of the chateau 
which is a compromise between the unmeaning 
adulation of its contemporary critics and the igno- 
rance of the casual traveller. 

" Chambord," says he, " must be taken for what 
it is; for an attempt in which the architect has 
sought to reconcile the methods of two opposite 
principles, to unite in one building the fortified 
castle of the Middle Ages and the pleasure-palace " 
of the sixteenth century. Granted that the attempt 
was an absurd one, it must be remembered that the 
Renaissance was but just beginning in France; 
Gothic art seemed out of date, yet none other had 
established itself to take its place. In literature, in 



(?lic (3/iateau of Ohaml^otd 



(okambo'cci 209 

morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in 
the civilisation of the time has already become 
evident even in the course of these small wanderings 
in a single province, and if only this transition 
period is realised in all its meaning, with all the 
" monstrous and inform " characteristics that were 
inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange 
sixteenth century in France is half explained, of 
this " glorious devil, large in heart and brain. That 
did love beauty only," and would have it some- 
where, somehow, at whatever cost. 

Francis I. had passed his early years at Cognac, 
at Amboise, or Romorantin, and when he first saw 
Chambord it was only the old feudal manor-house 
built by the Counts of Blois. He transformed it, 
not by the help of Primaticcio, with whose name 
it is tempting to associate any building of this 
King's, for the methods of contemporary Italian 
architecture were totally different; but, as M. de 
la Saussaye proves, by the skill of that fertile school 
of art and architecture round Tours and Blois, and 
more particularly of one Maitre Pierre Trinqueau, 
or Le Nepveu, whose name is connected with more 
successful buildings at Amboise and Blois. The 
plan is that of the true French chateau; in the 
centre is the habitation of the seigneur and his 

family, flanked by four angle towers; on three 
Vol. II.— 14 



210 did ^1 



OLizatne 



sides is a court closed by buildings, also with towers 
at each angle, and like most feudal dwellings the 
central donjon has one of its sides on the exterior 
of the whole. 

Though all ideas of a practical defence are sacri- 
ficed to produce a dwelling-house, yet this house is 
furnished with secret stairways, with isolated tur- 
rets, with numberless facilities for what the gallant 
M. Viollet le Due calls " les intrigues secretes de 
cette cour jeune et toute occupee de galanteries," 
which kept up the constant semblance of a mimic 
war. Michelet, romantic as ever, explains the 
strangeness of the plan of Chambord by the state 
of mind in which the grandson of Valentine Vis- 
conti returned from his prison at Madrid; but the 
chateau of Longchamps with the exquisite work 
of Girolamo della Robbia, which was begun only 
a year after (1527), seems sufficient contradiction, 
if that were necessary, to this last theory. 

It may well be imagined that Chambord is the 
parody of the old feudal castles, just as the Abbey 
of Thelema parodies the abbeys of the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries. Both heaped a fatal ridicule 
upon the bygone age, but what Rabelais could only 
dream Francis could realise, yet not with the unfet- 
tered perfection that was granted to the vision of 
Gargantua; for surely never was the spirit of the 



(jkambo'cd 211 

time seized and smitten into incongruous shapes of 
stone at so unfortunate a moment, just when the 
early Renaissance was striving to take upon itself 
the burden which was too heavy for the failing 
Gothic spirit, just when success was coming but 
had not yet come. 

But Mrs. Mark Pattison has pointed out one 
great danger of criticising the castle as it is now. 
" Burdened," says this writer,^ " by the weighty 
labours of Louis XIV., weakened by eight improv- 
ing years at the hands of Stanislas Leczinski, 
mutilated by Marshal Saxe, the Chambord which 
we now go out from Blois to visit is not the Cham- 
bord of Francis I. The broad foundations and 
heaving arches which rose proudly out of the waters 
of the moat no longer impress the eye. The 
truncated mass squats ignobly upon the turf, the 
waters of the moat are gone, gone are the deep 
embankments crowned with pierced balustrades, 
gone is the no longer needed bridge with its 
guardian lions." 

It is only from within the court, where the great 
towers fling their shadows over the space, where 
pinnacles and gables soar into the air, and strange 
gargoyles and projections shoot from the darkness 
into light, that it is possible to realise the admira- 
1 Renaissance of Art in France, vol. i. 55. 



212 Old Oowcatne 

tion which Chambord roused when it was first 
created. Brantome waxes enthusiastic over its 
wonders, and describes how the King had drawn 
up plans (mercifully never c*arried out) to divert 
the waters of the Loire to his new palace, not con- 
tent with the slender stream of Cosson, from which 
the place derived its name/ Others compare it to 
a palace out of the Arabian Nights raised at the 
Prince's bidding by a genie, or like Lippomano, 
the Venetian ambassador, to " the abode of Mor- 
gana or Alcinous " ; but this topheavy barrack is 
anything rather than a " monument feerique " ; it 
might with as much humour be called a " souvenir 
de premieres amours," as the learned M. de la 
Saussaye has it. Both these descriptions fit Che- 
nonceaux admirably; when used of Chambord 
they are out of place. 

The praises of contemporary critics may have 
been more genuine when they drew attention to the 
marvellous staircase in the middle of the chateau, 
which is the first thing to which the guide directs 
his visitors. This is indeed a gigantic freak of 

1 Chambord is apparently the correct spelling, not Cham- 
bourg ; from which it would seem that the name is derived 
from the Celtic " cam " (French courbe), from the turn which 
the Cosson takes at this point, and " rhyd," a ford or passage. 

Cf. " Cambridge " = the passage over the twisting river. — 
M. de la Saussaye, Chambord, p. 44. 



Gharnbotd 213 

fancy, and worthy of the buildings which contain 
it, where Gargantua and Pantagruel might have 
wandered amid congenial surroundings. 

It has two openings, and by imagining two huge 
corkscrews one within the other, whose curves 
ascend together yet never touch except at their 
extreme edges, the perplexed visitor strives to un- 
derstand how it comes about that his companion, 
who is mounting upward like himself, can never 
meet him though never be completely lost. 

From the country visible from the open top of 
this staircase, one of the chief ornaments of the 
roof, it is perhaps possible to assign a reason for the 
position of the old castle, which is confirmed by a 
manuscript in the library of Blois. The place 
seems originally to have formed part of a system 
which guarded the approaches of the Loire, and 
made it possible for Joan of Arc to move up the 
river to Orleans. This old fortress of the Counts 
of Blois and Champagne passed with the rest of the 
estates to the family of the Dukes of Orleans, and 
through them to the Crown, at the accession of 
Louis XII.; this it was that his successor Francis 
changed into an unwieldy hunting-seat in 1526. 
For twelve years eighteen hundred workmen la- 
boured incessantly at the task, and it was handed 
on to the next reign unfinished. 



214 Old Ooutaine 

Here came Francis towards the end of his life, 

when he sought vainly to forget the fever that was 

in him by wild hunting excursions throughout his 

great estates in Touraine, and with him his sister, 

the Queen of Navarre, his " rare pale Margaret," 

whose eyes, " ever trembling through the dew of 

dainty woful sympathies," were anxiously watching 

her idolised brother in his sickness. It was in one 

of their conversations that Francis, perhaps grown 

wiser with experience, echoed Virgil with his lines 

upon the fickleness of woman. Tradition says that 

the pane of glass which so ungallantly preserved 

the words — 

" Toute femme varie 
Mai habil qui s'y fie," 

was broken by a later King whose philosophy was 
not yet proof to the fascinations of Louise de la 
Valliere.^ 

1 There has been much controversy about this famous in- 
scription. Even the phrasing of it differs in every authority, 
especially for the second line. There are three proofs from 
which I have argued its existence, (i) The statement in the 
Lettres Inedites de la Reine Marguerite, Partie i^e; (2) the 
testimony of Brantome, an eye-witness, " et I'ayant leu en 
grande lettre, y avoit ce mot : Tout femme varie " {Brantome , 
ed. Lalanne, t. ix. p. 715) ; (3) in 1682 Bernier (Histoire de 
Blois, p. 8) says " Ton y voit cette rime," etc. Whether it 
was Louis XIV. or not who destroyed it, it exists no longer; 
and even the signature which M. de la Saussaye considers to 
be that of Francis is totally unlike his handwriting in the 
MSS. of the Bibliotheque Nationale. 



Qkambord 215 

Charles IX. came here after Francis I. had gone 
to hunt shadowy boars in the Elysian fields, but 
there was not much happening at the castle for the 
next few reigns. Henry IV. found himself far too 
busy to leave Paris, and too happy at Fontainebleau 
with Gabrielle d'Estrees, who probably found Che- 
nonceaux far more to her taste when she went ex- 
cursions into the country. 

Later on Louis XIII. was wandering in his mel- 
ancholy way through the corridors of Chambord, 
with his arm in that of his favourite for the time 
being. " Mettons nous a cette fenetre. Monsieur," 
he was saying, " et ennuyons nous " — apparently 
this was the one occupation of a monarch who was 
more thoroughly bored with himself and others 
than any crowned head in Europe. " Vexed with 
a morbid devil in his blood, That veiled the world 
with jaundice," his very love affairs were so mo- 
rosely platonic that the Court almost lost interest 
in their incidents. It was at Chambord that this 
timid lover, wishing to take a note from the fair 
Mademoiselle de Hautefort, who had hidden it in 
her bosom, advanced to capture the missive with a 
pair of tongs.^ His father could have taught him 

1 The science of correct dates will very soon make any ro- 
mance in history impossible. It is argued that because the 
lady was born in 1616, and Chambord was given to Prince 
Gaston in 1626, this incident did not occur. Tallemant des 



216 6Ld '^o 



lizaine 



better manners, more gallantry or less of clum- 
siness. 

In the fourth act of Victor Hugo's drama we can 
see the curtain lifted for a moment upon the Court 
at Chambord. There is the King, who finds it 
hard enough to live, without the added trouble of 
a kingdom, striving to shake off the power of 
Richelieu, whose scarlet robes so terribly suggest 
the powers of his of^ce. " La pourpre est faite 
avec des gouttes de leur sang." There is the Due 
de Bellegarde, laughing with the Marquis de Nan- 
gis, while a Mousquetaire stands sentinel before 
the royal door; De Retz is Jiere too, and L'Angely 
the jester, and the Vicomte de Rohan, who makes 
a strange discovery behind the arras, for Marion de 
Lorme is there, pleading in terrible earnest for her 
lover's life. 

Reaux, whom Dumas considers a sufficient authority, relates 
it; and why should it not have been at Chambord, where 
tradition insists that the event took place, and where the 
courtiers who laughed over the Bourgeois Gentilhomme were 
still told the story that had lasted to their days in all its 
piquancy? The place where Mademoiselle de Hautefort hid 
the innocent epistle had achieved a certain amount of reputa- 
tion in French literature ; Boisrobert writes of a pearl that 
was equally fortunate — 

" Ne te plains pas du piege ou je te vols tombee, 
Riche perle qui fais le plaisir de nos yeux : 
La gorge qui t'a derobee 
Fait des larcins plus precieux ! " 



G/iambotd 217 

It was not often that so interesting a " scene " 
took place at Chambord. When in 1626 the castle 
became the property of Monsieur Gaston, brother 
of the King, the small Mademoiselle de Montpen- 
sier found much innocent amusement in laughing 
up and down the winding steps of that perplexing 
staircase, while her solemn father mounted with her 
to the open lantern at the top. Gaston, with his 
red beard and sleepy eyes, was probably as mys- 
tified as his more lively daughter; but Gaston sel- 
dom laughed, and would never admit his perspi- 
cuity to be at fault. It would have been fortunate 
for him, perhaps, if the problem of that staircase 
had been the only one his dull brains had tried to 
fathom, or if he had kept to his botanical researches 
with his physician, Albert Brunyer. His attempts 
at politics only revealed, by the dastardly aban- 
donment of Chalais, of Cinq Mars, and De Thou, 
that to his general faults of ignorance and incapac- 
ity must be added the severer blame of an un- 
pardonable ingratitude.^ 

But with nothing save a staircase to recommend 
it by way of frivolous amusement, it is easily intelli- 

1 " Monsieur," says that acute observer, De Retz, " etait un 
des hommes du monde le plus faible, et tout ensemble le plus 
defiant et le plus couvert . . . il faisait en toutes choses 
comme font la plupart des hommes quand ils se baignent : ils 
ferment les yeux en se jetant dans I'eau." 



218 Old ^i 



outaine 



igible that Chambord was no favourite with the 
Dianes and Gabrielles of the period; and Madame 
de Maintenon, at a time when Louis XIV. gave 
the place one of its few glimpses of royal gaiety, 
seems to have spent her time there chiefly in quar- 
relling with Madame de Montespan. It was in one 
of the great rooms on which the staircase opens 
that Louis XIV. sat, solemn and bored, amid a 
sympathetically jaded Court to hear the first per- 
formance of Pourceaugnac. Moliere was ill, and 
Lulli, who had on the instant filled the vacant place, 
was in despair at the array of long-drawn faces 
listening wearily before the stage. Something 
must be done to rouse the King. Our courageous 
Lulli suddenly bounds across the footlights, and 
from the debris of a discomfited orchestra joyfully 
detects the peal of royal laughter that greets this 
unexpected piece of acting. The play ended in a 
general applause. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was 
more successful, and at once, as it deserved to be. 
It is amusing to detect the satisfaction of M, I'Am- 
bassadeur from the Levant, who takes to himself 
all the credit of the Turkish metamorphosis and 
superintends the correct Eastern costume and 
mise-en-scene for M. Moliere. 

In 1725 the luckless Stanislas Leczinski found a 
home here, to mourn over his lost Poland, and left 



(okambotd 219 

an appropriate memory of kindliness and charity 
among the scattered peasantry of the neighbour- 
hood. 

The next tenant was of a very different character. 
The astonished villagers could now hear words of 
command echoing from the terrace, and see squad- 
rons of horse wheeling to and fro under the orders 
of the conqueror of Fontenoy. 

Maurice de Saxe, the newcomer, owed his birth 
to a strange and still unexplained event. In 1695 
Sophia Dorothea, wife of the Electoral Prince of 
Hanover, was sent suddenly to prison in the for- 
tress of Ahlden, and her lover, Count Philip von 
Konigsmarck, simultaneously disappeared. His 
sister, Aurora von Konigsmarck, went to seek help 
from Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, and 
the negotiations resulted in the birth of Marshal 
Saxe. After a rough education, he went to France 
and waited for a chance of fighting, consoling him- 
self in the interval with Adrienne Lecouvreur. He 
was six feet high, with good features, blue eyes, and 
black arched brows, and needed only the address 
which every Konigsmarck possessed to prove him- 
self capable of procuring " consolation " whenever 
he might need to seek it. 

At last, in 1740, came the league against Maria 
Theresa ; and five years afterwards, though he had 



220 Old ^> 



ouzame 



just been tapped for dropsy and was carried in a 
litter on the field, chewing a bullet to ease his rag- 
ing thirst, he had defeated Cumberland at Fontenoy 
and opened the way to the Scheldt. He was re- 
warded with the estate of Chambord, which he 
forthwith decorated with his captured cannon and 
filled with his bodyguard of Uhlans, and then pro- 
ceeded to forget as fast as possible the politics 
which had given him his chance of victory. " I 
know nothing about your infernal reasons of state," 
he cried to the Comte de Maurepas, and at once 
began to thoroughly enjoy himself after his own 
manner.^ 

Fetes and reviews, such as had not been seen 
since the building of the chateau, were now the 
order of the day; and the Marshal would soon 
have killed himself off in the ordinary course of 
events, had not an old enemy appeared to save him 
the trouble. A letter was suddenly brought one 
morning from a carriage that had just driven 
through the park. Marshal Saxe at once went out, 
attended only by an aide-de-camp, and disappeared 
in one of the alleys branching out into the forest 
from the main drive. In a short time he was car- 

1 By an actress, Mademoiselle Veneres, he had a daughter 
Aurora who married a M. Dupin de Francueil, and became 
the mother of George Sand, whom we have heard of already 
at Chenonceaux. 



Ghambo'tcl 221 

ried home badly wounded. There had been a duel 
with the Prince of Conti, who had been his enemy 
ever since the Flanders campaign of 1747, and the 
Marshal had been worsted. 

The doctors could do nothing for him, and like 
Rabelais he went with a laugh to seek the " grand 
peut-etre." " Life," said the dying general, " is 
but a dream. Mine has been short, but it has been 
a good one." 

It is strange that almost the only bit of the old 
furniture left by the Revolution was the great mar- 
ble table on which the body of Marshal Saxe had 
been embalmed. This same outburst of revolu- 
tionary iconoclasts came very near puHing down 
Chambord altogether, which at any rate deserved 
to remain when once it had been built; and after 
refusing to sell it to a society of Quakers, who 
hoped to make use of it no doubt in some pacific 
schemes of manufacture, they pulled down all the 
fleurs-de-lys within reach and otherwise mutilated 
the place, according to the Republican standard. 
And when Madame la Duchesse de Berry visited it 
in 1828, she must have been astonished to find the 
disorder which a few regiments with a proper spirit 
can effect in the strongest Royalist abode. 

Chambord was at this time the property of Henri 
de Bourbon, who, though he was an exile, took his 



222 Old uoutaine 

title from this estate in France, which had been 
presented to him by national subscription. The 
subscription itself is chiefly memorable for the 
brilliant pamphlet which it evoked from Paul Louis 
Courier, the " Simple Discours du Vigneron de la 
Chavonniere." ^ 

In 1870 Chambord was garrisoned in earnest by 
the French, who were as usual taken by surprise 
by a German attack and compelled to make a stra- 
tegic movement to the rear. In the next year the 
Comte de Chambord wrote the famous letter about 
the white flag of the Bourbons, on one of the few 
visits he ever made to the estate. " This amazing 
epistle," says Mr. Henry James, " which is virtu- 
ally an invitation to the French people to repudiate 
as their national ensign that immortal tricolour, the 
flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under which 
they have won the glory which of all glories has 
hitherto been dearest to them." The logic of the 
Comte de Chambord was inevitable and fine, if un- 
fortunate. It ruined the Legitimist cause; but the 
last of the Bourbons could not, for any reason, have 
turned his back on the white flag. 

1 The pamphlet begins : " Si nous avions de I'argent a n'en 
savoir que faire, toutes nos dettes payees, nos chemins repares 
. . . je crois, mes amis, qu'il faudrait contribuer a refaire 
le pont de Saint Avertin . . . mais d'acheter Chambord 
pour le due de Bordeaux je ne suis pas d'avis." 



'^Iie £antezn, (jhdteati of (jliambozd 



Gkambotd 223 

The Prince's rooms, decorated with the most 
impossible of tapestries presented by the ladies of 
France, are exhibited by the guide, and his vast 
collection of extremely military toys of great per- 
fection of workmanship and detail. There is also 
here an excellent statue of the Madame Elizabeth 
who so courageously attempted to save the Queen, 
and at the last died with her. It is one more me- 
mento among many, of the terrible efifects of the 
Revolution. 

Our last, and perhaps most satisfactory, visit was 
to the forest of masonry upon the roof. Chimneys 
had expanded into monuments and lanterns into 
mausoleums, yet none of the grace with which the 
chimneys are treated at Azay or Chenonceaux is 
visible; nothing strikes the onlooker but a massive- 
ness without much object, in which any beauty of 
detail ^ is only thrown away. 

Only as we began to drive homewards, in the 
slanting rays of sunset, did the Towers of Cham- 
bord begin to look more attractive. The stunted 
aspect of the masonry became less perceptible, and 
with the last tint of rose-red light upon its lofty 
fleur-de-lys, Chambord, as we left it, seemed finer 
than it had been before. Chateaubriand's poetical 

1 Chiefly consisting in squares and diamonds of slate let 
into the surface of the stone. 



224 OLd Ooiizalne 

description seemed more justified : the brilliant 
butterfly of the Renaissance striving to burst 
through its still visible chrysalis of Gothic tradi- 
tions, the laced and ruffled head of the cavalier ap- 
pearing above the strong joints of his armour, the 
beauty that was sought for and so nearly won, 
showed clearer than the failure which had at first 
oppressed us. 

The drive back returns to Blois by a different 
road and we came in sight of the cathedral with a 
magnificent sunset sky behind it. The darkening 
river shone with a reflected golden light, while the 
black towers above it stood out against a bank of 
amber clouds that faded into violet and gray. 



(Jozay-le- QjiDtdeau 



CHAPTER XXII 

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 

" Ce chasteau est ung des beaulx des gentils des mignons 
des mieulx elaborez chasteaulx de la mignonne Touraine, et 
se baigne tousiours en I'lndre comme une galloise princiere." 

The Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau was built in 1520 
by Gilles Berthelot, a relation of the Brigonnet, 
Beaune, and Bohier families, to whom Touraine 
owes so many of its graceful homes. It is re- 
markable not so much for its history ^ as for its 
extreme beauty as a type of the pure early French 
Renaissance architecture, untouched by the Italian 
influence of Primaticcio. The old fortress-dwell- 
ing is entirely discarded, nor is any attempt made, 
as at Chambord, to unite the feudal fortress to the 
hunting-seat. While Le Nepveu was actually at- 

1 The name is apparently derived from one Hugues Ridel, 
one of the knights-banneret of Touraine instituted by Philip 
Augustus, originally destined to command the road from Tours 
to Chinon. The old chateau was taken by the Burgundians 
in the reign of Charles VI., and retaken by the Dauphin in 
1418, to be altogether rebuilt in the next century. Its new 
owner, Berthelot the financier, was involved in the usual dis- 
tresses which seemed the inevitable portion of the Beaunes 
and Bohiers, and died of grief at Cambrai in 1529. 

227 



228 did '^0 



utatne 



tempting a " tour de force " that from its very 
nature could but be doomed to failure, the walls of 
Azay-le-Rideau were rising at the bidding of a per- 
fect and consistent plan. The luxuriant fancy of 
the architect has given itself free play in making as 
beautiful a dwelling-place as could be well imag- 
ined, and using only those details of the old for- 
tress architecture which gave solidity to the whole 
while they added to the picturesqueness of its 
various parts. The old master masons had well- 
nigh disappeared, and in their place had arisen the 
brilliant school of Jean Bullant, of Pierre Lescot, 
of Jean Goujon, who, while Maitre le Roux and Le 
Primatice were working at Fontainebleau, formed 
in France the strong national artistic Renaissance 
that remained almost untouched by innovations 
from the schools of Rome and Florence. 

Azay-le-Rideau is built in the form of an L upon 
its side, with the entrance in the courtyard formed 
by the meeting of the long arm of the letter with 
its base. At each corner is placed with exquisite 
effect a turreted and crested tower, and by an ex- 
tremely happy turn of the angle of the building 
which is nearest to the entrance bridge across the 
river, an effect of distance and beauty of line is 
secured unequalled among the series of architect- 
ural triumphs. 



Qke (jkateau of o^zai^-U-cJiDtdeau 



Cbzaij-Le-cJiDideaii 229 

Nor is the setting of this rare building unworthy 
of the gem it holds. Under the bridge, guarded by 
two sculptured lions, flow the waters of the Indre, 
that turn again in graceful curves beneath the win- 
dows of the chateau, and are fringed with banks 
of pleasant green shaded by limes and cedars. The 
winding walks lead round towards the other side, 
past a carved gallery of stone with curved steps lead- 
ing downwards from the windows to the water, past 
the corner tower, to the long facade. Here, as in the 
entrance court, the walls are covered with carved 
panels, the bands that mark the different stories are 
accentuated with graceful ornament, the very 
chimney-tops are decorated with raised broidery, 
and beneath the deep-cut line of the embrasures, 
marking the low fall of the roof, the windows set in 
sculptured frames have their full value and effect. 
Round the next corner, in the quiet pool, swim the 
great carp preserved for the table of the Marquis,^ 
lazily floating beneath the balcony that looks out 
upon the water. 

Among the trees lies hidden a small chapel, res- 
onant with the rapid waters that fall in silver foam 
upon each side and rush beneath its stone floor; 

1 The present owner is M. le Marquis de Biencourt, by whom 
an added grace of tasteful habitation is given to the rooms 
of Azay. 



230 Old ^outaine 

and from this point a particularly charming view of 
the angle that holds the central court within may 
be obtained. It is in this central court that the 
carving on the walls is brought to its greatest per- 
fection. Worthy in some parts of Jean Goujon's 
chisel, it gives a singularly rich effect of fretted 
lace-work among the lights and shadows of the 
graceful corner towers, and, every pretence of for- 
tification having been cast aside, rises to its high- 
est excellence in the work above the entrance. 
Mrs. Mark Pattison gives the following description 
of it : '* The first frieze shows bas-reliefs of the 
salamander of Francis L, and of the ermine of 
Claude of Brittany, his wife, who lay dying at Blois 
in July 1524, when this chateau was in course of 
building. On the plinth which supports the two 
windows of the pediment the same devices appear; 
then a little arcade connects the ground floor with 
the upper stories, the pilasters and other members 
of which are covered with arabesques which may 
challenge comparison for beauty of design with 
the most exquisite passages produced at a later 
period." 

Azay-le-Rideau should be seen last of the cha- 
teaux of Touraine, for as it is perhaps the most beau- 
tiful and perfect of them all, so its beauty gains by 
its association with all that is best and most attrac- 



(%zai/-le-cJaicleau 231 

tive; for in the shrine of Azay is gathered the whole 
gallery of faces of those who have made the his- 
tory of Blois, of Amboise, of Chenonceaux, of 
France; and the chateau, that is happy in its own 
lack of history and intrigue, gathers up within its 
sculptured walls the memories of all that was worth 
keeping of the old life that throbbed and struggled 
in the larger chateaux, and left them ruined or de- 
faced. If the traveller who has seen the hot sun- 
shine of the summer beat upon the walls of Loches 
and Chinon, or light up the halls of Blois, is so 
fortunate as to come to Azay in the cool, clear air 
of autumn, when the delicate colouring of its oaf ven 
balconies is framed in the gold and crimson of the 
changing leaves, he will find, as we found, just 
such an ending to his own travels, just such a com- 
pletion to his memories, as his imagination could 
desire. 

No catalogue has yet been made of the most 
interesting pictures in the chateau; but among 
them all should be picked out the exquisitely clear 
and careful presentment by F. Clouet of the face 
of Catherine de Medicis. This work is in the 
Chambre des Rois, where Francis I. and Louis 
XIV. slept on their various visits.^ 

Among many portraits of Francis I., perhaps 
^ See list of pictures in the Appendix. 



232 Old Oowcaine 

that in the first guest-room is the best. There is 
the long nose, the insufferable smile upon his lips 
that curl upward satyr-like towards the narrow 
eyes, the crisp close-cut brownish beard, the pink 
silken sleeves and doublet. Above him, in stern 
contrast, hangs the face of Calvin. 

But in the salon are the greatest treasures of the 
whole collection. Here is the charming Marie 
Stuart in youth, painted with exquisite care and 
refinement, with her young husband in the same 
frame beside her; here is the great picture of 
Henry II. on horseback, with the interlacing 
letters on his harness that cover the walls of Che-- 
nonceaux; here are the haggard eyes of Charles 
IX., full of the nameless terrors of the wild night 
of St. Bartholomew, and weighed down in mor- 
tal melancholy by the fatal counsels of his moth- 
er. Marguerite of Navarre is here as well, and 
the relentless face of Anne de Montmorency, the 
stern Constable, Coligny, white-haired and ven- 
erable, and the weak revolting countenance of 
Henry III. 

Upon the other wall is the bright child's face of 
Charles IX. before the plots of Catherine de Medicis 
had wrecked him soul and body. Near him is the 
Pucelle d' Orleans and Philip of Burgundy; while 
Anne of Austria, still striving to be beautiful, 



Cbzaif-U-c/ljldeau 233 

is showing off the " fairest hand and arm in 
France." 

All the ages of French History look down upon 
us from the panels as we pass. In another guest- 
room is the beautiful laughing face of Henrietta 
of England, whose young husband with his effemi- 
nate eyes and satin bows had watched us in the 
room before. Farther on is Mademoiselle de 
Montpensier in the merry days of her girlhood, too 
cruelly placed near the great red hat that shades 
her disappointed face in later life. Near to this is 
the small bourgeoise head of the Pompadour, next 
her contemporary Mademoiselle de I'Enclos, ever- 
lastingly invincible, and opposite to these the 
stately figure of Madame de Maintenon. 

But the list grows long — of grave and gay, of 
good and bad, all thrown together as they never 
were in life, and all for the first time meeting under 
one roof, never (let us hope) to be separated again. 

" Old faces glimmered thro' the doors, 
Old footsteps trod the upper floors." 

There seemed a strange reality about this great 
company of the illustrious dead. It must have 
been here that Gautier dreamed of the old manor- 
house where, as the evening falls, the portraits step 
down from their frames. 



234 Old ^ou 



taine 



" D'un reflet rouge illuminee 
La bande se chauffe les doigts, 
Et fait cercle a la cheminee 
Ou tout a coup flambe le bois. 
L'image au sepulcre ravie 
Perd son aspect roide et glace, 
La chaude pourpre de la vie 
Remonte aux veines du passe." 

It seemed no easy thing to step from so vivid 
a resurrection of the past into the present that was 
beneath, as we descended towards the entrance 
hall by the fine staircase, the chief glory of the 
chateau, that is panelled with the portraits of the 
kings of France; and where the towers of the old 
church ^ showed among the trees beyond the park, 
we wandered slowly back across the murmuring 
Indre, and left Azay-le-Rideau veiled in the soft 
beauty of a golden mist. 

" Chateau du Souvenir, adieu ! " 

* " There are some Angevine traces about the architecture 
of this church," says Mr. Petit {op. cit.), " but the oldest 
part, now the north aisle, the tower, and its eastern apse, 
seem, as in other instances, to have constituted formerly the 
whole church." 

Even in the eleventh century, when under the direction of 
the Abbey of Cormery, this church is spoken of as old, and 
still shows traces of ninth and tenth century work. There 
are some particularly curious archaic statuettes and carvings 
along the front. 



Qke (Down of Oouzd and ltd 
&azzoundin^d 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE TOWN OF TOURS AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 

" Monuments de la vieille France, 
Passe plus frais que I'avenir, 
Ou trouverai-je une esperance 
Egale a votre souvenir ? " 

With Chambord and Azay-le-Rideau the list is 
ended of those typical castles in the valley of the 
Loire which must of necessity be visited. The 
history in which they bore a part ended in the story 
of the last Valois king at Blois. The school of 
architecture of which they furnish so many brill- 
iant examples has reached its highest point of 
delicacy and perfection in the achievement of Azay. 
It only remains to indicate quite briefly a few of 
those castles which have been left almost unmen- 
tioned. Though of less interest, whether historical 
or architectural, than those already described, yet 
they cannot be omitted from the shortest sketch of 
what can be seen and learned in the extraordinary 
district between Blois and Saumur which, for want 
of a more accurate name, I have called " Old 
Touraine." 

Blois, like Tours, is a centre from which it is 
237 



238 Old %. 



owcaine 



possible to do much. Chambord and Chaumont 
we already know; but there are two other chateaux, 
Cheverny and Beauregard, within a drive of Blois, 
which have yet to be explored. After keeping 
for a long time in the shadow of the forest, the 
road from Blois reaches the quiet little village of 
Cheverny, and a short distance farther on passes 
the old church of Cour-Cheverny with its fine 
roofed porch; opposite to this is the gateway of 
the chateau, which is very large and white and 
modern-looking, built with pavilions on each side 
in the style of Versailles, and with the foundations 
with which Mansard had already familiarised us in 
the newest part of Blois. 

The best pictures are in the grand salon, where 
is the face of the founder Philippe Hurault, Comte 
de Cheverny, Chancellor of France in the reign of 
Henry IV. Opposite to him is his wife Anne de 
Thou, a relation of the friend of the unhappy Cinq 
Mars, who perished on the same scafifold. Their 
daughter is above the mantelpiece, a Scotch-look- 
ing woman with black hair strung with pearls. 

But the finest work of art in the whole chateau 
is the portrait of Cosmo de Medicis when quite 
young, which hangs on the right hand of the door; 
it has unfortunately been retouched all round the 
face in 1827, but is not seriously damaged; the 



Glievetny 239 

treatment of the armour and lace, the masterly 
touches in the growth of the hair round the temples, 
and the magnificent breadth of the style would al- 
most suggest that, did dates allow of it, this pict- 
ure was the work of Titian. 

In the next room is an excellent pencil sketch by 
Robert le Fevre of Charles X., with his falling un- 
der lip and high-bridged nose. The rest of the 
ground floor is chiefly decorated with the advent- 
ures of Don Quixote, painted on the panels of the 
gallery and dining-room. 

A carved stone staircase leads to the Salle des 
Gardes above, which rejoices in an extremely well- 
preserved floor and ceiling, while the long row of 
tall windows looking out upon the park lights up 
to the full a room whose fine proportions are un- 
concealed by any attempt at furniture. The walls 
only, besides their appropriate decoration of tro- 
phies and suits of armour, are lined at the bottom 
with panel paintings of various flowers, each with a 
Latin motto. But the most extraordinary room in 
the chateau is the small " chambre des rois " be- 
yond, wherein is the first parquetry made after tiles 
" went out." The walls are completely covered 
with tapestry and painting, and within this appro- 
priate setting is the " legendary-looking bed " in 
which the good chancellor died in 1599. 



240 did "S. 



outaine 



On the left hand of the road that leads back to 
Blois, in the midst of the Forest of Russy, stands 
another chateau filled with pictures, with the appro- 
priate name of Beauregard. There is the same 
strangely new appearance here as we had noticed 
at Cheverny, for probably little remains of the old 
chateau to which Jean du Thier (as Ronsard tells 
us) brought home in 1545 the Pindar and Simon- 
ides he had saved from Constantinople. The col- 
lection of pictures was begun by the minister Paul 
Ardier early in the seventeenth century, and com- 
poses a complete series of fifteen reigns down to 
Louis XIV., placed in the long gallery floored 
with tiles that represent a whole army of the reign 
of Louis XIV.; this must have been much as we 
see it now when Mademoiselle de Montpensier 
came to visit De Vineuil here and talked over the 
intrigues of the Fronde and the doings of the great 
Conde. 

Besides these pictures — there are some three 
hundred and fifty of them — there is not much to see 
save a charming sketch by Watteau in the drawing- 
room, of the Duchesse de Dino, the chatelaine at 
the beginning of the present century. 

Before travelling westward again, there is Ramo- 
rantin to be seen, where Louise de Savoie first 
brought up her young son Francis, and where later 



o/oamo'cantin — c/Ibontzic/iazcl 241 

on she saw the comet in the sky that presaged his 
success at Marignano. Upon the banks of the 
Cher is Montrichard, one of the many strongholds 
of Foulques Nerra, and now terribly damaged by 
the vandalism of 1793; on almost every eminence 
that rises from the vine-clad plains the traveller 

" Decouvre du vieux manoir 
Les tourelles en poivriere 
Et les hauts toits en eteignoir," 

and nearly all are filled with memories of the 
Fronde; for here the chief actors in those troublous 
times came to repose a little from the feverish in- 
trigues of Paris, to talk a little quiet scandal, like 
De Retz, or to lie " perdue " till the storm blew 
over, like Madame de Chevreuse and many more 
of the " beautes de qualite," who mixed up politics 
with gallantry and claimed the lead in both. 

From his chateau east of Loches, between the 
Indre and the Cher, the Due de Montresor would 
ride across to Tours to talk to Madame de Chev- 
reuse of the impossibility of rousing Gaston d'Or- 
leans to anything approaching consistent policy or 
courageous support to his allies; or stop at Mont- 
bazon, a little farther northward down the Indre, 
to hear the latest news of Marie de Rohan's quarrel 
with the Duchesse de Longueville. Of Mont- 
VoL. II.— 16 



242 did "bo 



azattie 



bazon little is left now save " the ruins of a castle, 
built when men knew how to build, upon a rock 
with turrets lichen-gilded like a rock," and even 
in those times it seems to have fallen into disrepair, 
for the family lived chiefly at the Chateau of Cou- 
zieres, where the tale still lingers of the terrible 
end that befell the Duchesse de Montbazon, whose 
beauty De Retz praises so highly and whose vices 
even he cannot condone. In a famous sentence he 
has summed her up : " Je n'ai jamais vu personne 
qui eiit conserve dans le vice si peu de respect pour 
la vertu." 

The last of her lovers was one Armand de Ranee, 
an ecclesiastic of easy morals, like the Coadjutor 
himself, who " preached like an angel all the fore- 
noon, and hunted like a devil all the evening." The 
beauty of Marie de Rohan, perhaps too the strange 
attraction of her wild and unrestrained abandon- 
ment in the pursuit of pleasure, on horseback or 
afoot, had completely fascinated the Abbe de 
Ranee; with one last effort to shake ofif the spell he 
accepted the chance of employment in negotiations 
with the Vatican. But he could not stay in Italy; 
in the groves of the Campagna, in the corridors of 
the Vatican, the memory of Marie was with him 
still, and he could not rest away from her. After a 
hurried journey back he rode to the Chateau of 



(?, 



oiiziezed 243 



Couzieres late on an evening, too wrapped up in 
his own thoughts to see a strange air of sudden 
desolation in the place, or notice that the servants 
were in black; he was on familiar ground, and was 
soon through the side-door and mounting the 
secret staircase to her room. 

There were two candles burning in it as he en- 
tered, with a faint light that showed him the 
duchess lying on her bed ; he rushed across the 
room and kissed her passionately upon the lips; 
the white face fell from him heavily, and her head 
rolled down between his feet. 

How the unhappy lover fled from the room, with 
what thoughts of a husband's vengeance, of the 
terrible greeting that had been placed for him, we 
know not; but it was Armand de Ranee who was 
the first Abbe Commandataire de la Trappe, and 
sought perhaps, in the silence of the Trappiste 
monasteries, forgetfulness.^ 

It was to Couzieres that Marie de Medicis came 
from Montbazon, after she had escaped from the 

1 Such is the legend : the truth (as far as it will ever be 
known) is almost as strange. While De Ranee was away a 
sudden attack of smallpox had killed the Duchess, who was 
one of the finest riders and tallest women of her time ; the 
colifin that was hurriedly provided for her burial had proved 
too short, and the corpse could only be put in without its 
head, which was cut ofif and laid upon a silver tray ; and this 
was what the Abbe saw. 



244 did % 



outaine 



Chateau of Blois and had been persuaded to leave 
Angouleme; De Retz and Luynes had met her at 
Poitiers, and at Couzieres the Dukes of Guise and 
Montbazon joined them, to witness her reconcilia- 
tion with Louis XIII. , after which the whole Court 
left, with an exaggerated gaiety, to see the fetes 
at Tours. 

The chateau from which the Marechal de Luynes, 
the King's favourite, took his title is close to Tours, 
a little westward down the Loire; it stands upon 
a hill looking down upon the fields that slope 
toward the river, and is approached by a fine bridge 
very like that at Chinon. The place was called 
Maille ^ before Louis XIII. had given his favourite 
the title, and there are still standing relics of a far 
older time, in the great Roman aqueduct which 
bore the waters of the stream behind the Church of 
St. Vernant to the fort which defended the old road 
to Le Mans.^ 

The name of yet another favourite in the same 
reign is recalled by the strange Pile de Cinq Mars, 
a little farther down the valley. An explanation 
has already been suggested for this strange erec- 
tion; it may well have flashed signals for the Lan- 

^ Malliacense Castrum (Mabille). 

2 These ruins were ruins already in the time of Gregory of 
Tours, who says of the convent there, " ab antiquis vallatum 
aedificiis jam erutis." 



uroni a poztzatt in loffiti Cfallety, (J'Lozence 



Gincj c/lBatd — cJiDickeiieu 245 

terne de Rochecorbon to pass on to Amboise, but 
no reasonable account of its building and design 
has been as yet forthcoming. Upon the hill a little 
higher up are the ruins of a chateau, three round 
towers, the smallest with a pointed roof, and lower 
down a smaller tower, detached, that may have 
been the outworks of the entrance gate. It is ap- 
propriate that the memorials of so sad a fate, of so 
unexplained a character, should be ruins as strange 
and as decayed as these; De Vigny has told the 
whole sad story of the sudden rise to power, the 
hopeless love, the whole career of Cinq Mars, from 
his leaving home at Chaumont till his execution 
with De Thou. It is but one more trace of the 
sinister influence of Richelieu, who built one of the 
towns in Touraine, with whose memory all these 
Castles of the Fronde are filled. It was down the 
Loire that the Cardinal was borne in his last 
illness, in the vast litter which was carried into the 
towns at night, where gates built only for an ordi- 
nary prince were far too narrow, through breaches 
battered in the walls, as though by a besieging 
army. Many breathed more freely in the town of 
Richelieu,^ and in all Touraine, when that strong 
spirit passed away. " II avait assez de religion 
pour ce monde," says the broad-minded De Retz, 
1 A few miles south of Chinon. 



246 Old ^outaine 

" il aneantissait par son pouvoir et par son faste 
royal la majeste personnelle du roi," and it was for 
this mastery over the King, for this subjection in 
which he held all France, that Richelieu was chiefly 
hated in Touraine, one of the last strongholds of 
the feudal nobility who had opposed him to the 
last. 

We have drawn very close now to our journey's 
end, to the town of Tours itself. Upon the other 
side, eastwards, is the tall shaft poised upon a 
precipice which is known as the Lanterne de 
Rochecorbon; it is all that is left of the " chastel 
deschiquete et taillade comme ung pourpoinct 
hespaignol," which Messire Bruyn built when he 
returned from the crusades to marry his young 
wife. 

The next estates to his were those of the great 
Abbey of Marmoutier,^ within which the seven 
sleepers slept for five-and-twenty years, and appar- 
ently remained in unchanged slumber after death. 
The little cells within the solid rock wherein St. 
Martin and St. Gatien lived and prayed, are still 
to be seen; but the modern buildings (of the 
Sacred Heart) contrast somewhat too sharply with 
the bygone religious memories which the place un- 
consciously awakens, and which are preserved in 
the old door and shortened spire, alone, that face 
1 This word is said to be " mains monasterium" 



J^leddid-lez-uowcd 247 

the entrance. But the impressions of the modern 
Marmoutier are at least far preferable to the ter- 
rible disappointment that awaits, the visitor to 
Plessis-lez-Tours; he must boldly discard the vision 
that the scenes of Quentin Durward conjured up, he 
must approach with more than one sense blunted 
to the possibilities of offence, for the abode of the 
once " dreadful Louis " is reduced to an evil-smell- 
ing shed filled with the carts of the night scav- 
engers. 

There can still be traced (chiefly in the imagina- 
tion of the attendant ghoul) the outline and the 
walls and ditches of the park, the httle nook beneath 
a stairway where Balue was hidden in his cage, and 
certain problematical and earthly hollows which are 
supposed to lead by subterranean passages to the 
town of Tours; at their other end was the house 
of Tristan I'Hermite; the house that is called his, 
at any rate exists, and though nearly certainly 
built in the next century, it is worth a visit for its 
own sake; for the outside, which is decorated with 
a twisted cord (at once put down as the somewhat 
too obvious badge of Tristan's office), has a quiet 
harmony of colour in the lines of brick and stone; 
and the little court within, from which rises a tall 
tower with a winding stair, is a pretty example of 
the domestic architecture of the time. 



248 0U "6. 



owcaine 



The presence of the Court at Plessis, which was 
not always so offensive after all, was often the oc- 
casion of festivities in the Town. Mystery Plays, 
processions, and receptions often occupied the 
good citizens, who, as we have seen, were quite 
capable of taking their part in anything artistic. 
Their trade, too, flourished; in the birthplace of 
Jean Fouquet, of Michel Colombe, of Francois 
Clouet, the arts were not likely to fall into neglect, 
and in 1546 the Venetian Marino de' Cavalli 
notices one branch of industry in which those arts 
were used, " the manufactories of silken work and 
tapestry at Tours," he says, " are of the best in 
France; " the silk from Spain and Italy was sent 
there, and Venetian workmen were encouraged to 
come over to teach the Tourangeaux all that they 
knew of weaving broidery and tissues. In the year 
before this, just as the right-hand tower of the Ca- 
thedral was being brought to its completion, a 
Royal Charter had been granted for two fairs at 
Tours in March and in September, at which " silks 
and cloth of gold and silver, as good and fine as 
those of any foreign manufacture," were always on 
sale. These great fairs stopped in 1616, but were 
revived again in 1782, and still take place each 
winter and summer along the Quai beside the 
Loire. 



^ouzd 249 

One of the great features of the public reception 
given to Charles IX/ was an arch with an inscrip- 
tion referring to 

" La Soye, honneur de cette ville, 
Donnant la vie aux peuples avec leurs mains." 

Immediately after the Colonel of Infantry, in the 
procession that came out to greet the King, was the 
Company of Silk-makers clad in black velvet hats 
with green cord, in leather of the King's colour, 
pourpoints of " taffetas cramoisy " and black col- 
lars. Mercers, armourers, and jewellers followed, 
and a brave array of butchers " who were magnifi- 
cently dressed and very brawny men," wearing blue 
hats and scarlet doublets. Last came the " Sieurs 
de la Bazoche," the town company of actors, " who 
had right cunningly secured permission from the 
Silk Mercers, par une invention rare et magni- 
fique," to wear " taffetas cramoisy," and black vel- 
vet hats as well. 

The next royal reception was to Henry III. 
and his mother, in which devices were scattered 
throughout the town with complimentary refer- 

1 See La description de V entree du tres Chretien Roy Charles 
IX. du noin, en sa ville de Tours, par Jehan Cloppel, a Tours 
par Ollivier Tafforeau Imprimeur demeurant pres les Corde- 
liers, 1565, a rare little book in the Bibliotheque Nationale. 



250 ULd Ooutaine 

ences to the peace-loving virtues and general amia- 
bility of Catherine de Medicis. Tours was at this 
time in great happiness and prosperity, and Gi- 
rolamo Lippomano, the Venetian, sends home a 
glowing account of the pastures and beeves, the 
wine, the fruit, the corn, that grew in such abun- 
dance, the silks and merchandise that vied with 
goods from Naples and from Lucca. 

But the town was not to be wholly untouched by 
the political and religious quarrels of the sixteenth 
century. In 1588, certain printers found them- 
selves forced to quit Paris after the disturbances at 
the end of Henry III.'s reign, and fled to Tours, 
where they formed a society for the publication of 
certain works in demand.^ Their deed and agree- 
ment is still in existence. 

1 See " Une Association d'imprimeurs et de libraires de 
Paris refugies a Tours au xvi. siecle. Janet Mettayer. Marc 
Orry. Claude de Montr'oeil. Jehan Richer. Matthieu Guille- 
mot. Sebastien du Molin. Georges de Robet. Abel Langel- 
lier." Tours, imp. Rouille Ladeveze, 1878, 8vo. Their publi- 
cations are rather rare, and I have only seen two, which are 
Recueil de la Harangue faicte a V ouverture du Parlement, par 
M. C. Servain, 1589, and La Pucelle d' Orleans Restituee, par 
Jean Beroalde de Verulle, 1599. 

The first Guide-book I can discover for the town and dis- 
trict was published in 1592 by Isaac Frangois Sieur de la 
Girardie at Tours. 

L. Vitet in La Ligue gives a list of the many political pam- 
phlets published at this time, in a small duodecimo edition, with 
narrow margins, and thick type such as the Machiavel, printed 



^oatd 251 

The beginning of 1589 was an agitated time in 
many ways for the town that was so near the place 
where Guise had been murdered; a more interest- 
ing meeting than any seen that century came off 
in the gardens of Plessis when Henry of Navarre 
came from the Protestant assembly at La Rochelle, 
the only one of all his suite who had a cloak to 
wear or a feather in his hat, the famous " panache 
blanche " that led the way at Ivry. 

The last of the Valois embracing the first of the 
Bourbons must have been a strange sight for those 
of the courtiers who had watched the long strug- 
gle between the three Henrys; but now Guise was 
dead, and Catherine de Medicis, his bitterest enemy, 
was gone, there was nothing to hinder the King of 
Navarre from coming forward to take his true 
position. The murder of the King by Jacques 
Clement still further cleared his pathway to the 
throne of France, and with his reign the next cen- 
tury seemed at last likely to have rest from civil 
wars. 

Tours itself had not escaped the last efforts of 
the League — there had been hard fighting on the 
bridge and in the faubourg of St. Symphorien, from 
which Mayenne's men were only with difficulty 

at Tours, which Henry III. was reading Just before the murder 
of the Due de Guise. 



252 Old ^1 



ouzatne 



dislodged, after several churches had suffered ter- 
ribly from the rude treatment of the defenders of 
the Catholic Faith, 

One more reminder of De Guise's murder re- 
mained in a tower of the Fortress by the river — 
his young son, the Prince de Joinville, had been 
imprisoned there, and in 1593 escaped with singu- 
lar daring and success. On his way to mass, he 
suddenly laid a wager with his guards that he could 
run upstairs again quicker than they could; he 
reached his room first, bolted the door, and with a 
long cord which had been brought him by his 
laundress, slipped out of window with a bar be- 
tween his legs, and dropped from fifteen feet. 
With shots whistling round his ears, he rushed 
round the walls to the Faubourg de la Riche, where 
he found a baker's horse and leaped upon its back; 
the saddle turned round and threw him, and a 
soldier came up suddenly — it was no enemy, but 
by a happy chance, a Leaguer who gave him a 
fresh mount; in a few moments he was past the 
town and had soon put the Cher between himself 
and his pursuers. 

The town still prospered; and its manufactures 
had received further encouragement by the Edict 
of Nantes about 1598. The King had even or- 
dered mulberry trees to be planted round Paris, 



Ooutd 253 

Tours, and Orleans, and the first book published on 
the art of silk-making appeared, by one Jean Bap- 
tiste Letellier, But the next century saw a terrible 
change. 

The question of religion now becomes inextrica- 
bly mixed up with the commercial issues which are 
at stake, for at the head of the silk-weaving indus- 
try were the numerous families of Huguenots who 
for some time had been flourishing within the town; 
nor had their presence there been without suffer- 
ing; so far back as 1544, persecutions had begun in 
the town ^ of those heretics whose doctrines were 
first heard of twenty years before. Some of the 
leading Huguenots were even taken to Paris to be 
burnt, to serve as a more striking warning to the 
rest. At last in 1562 came the inevitable result of 
the massacre at Amboise. In the library at Tours 
is a horribly faithful representation of the slaying 
of the Huguenots throughout the town, and even 
in boats and barges on the river. There was of 
course vengeance upon the other side, when 
Conde's army ten years later opened the town 
again to the victorious Protestants, and towards 
the end of the century the presence of Henry of 
Navarre did much to strengthen the Huguenot 

1 See the excellent little work on Protestantism in Touraine 
by M. Dupin St. Andre, now Minister at Tours. 



254 etd '^0 



iLzaine 



cause. At last it seemed possible, in spite of sud- 
den outbursts of fanaticism, that the two religions 
should live side by side. The Huguenots, more- 
over, had justified their presence by their skill in 
arts and industries, particularly in the silk manu- 
facture, which was always the staple of commerce 
of the place. 

Suddenly, upon the i6th May, 1685, the Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes fell like a thunderclap 
upon the town. The Huguenots dispersed to 
Switzerland, to Holland, to the southern shores of 
England, even to America, carrying the secrets of 
their commerce with them, and, what was worse, 
followed by their workmen. Out of a total of 
eighty thousand inhabitants, fifty thousand went; 
the silk industry was destroyed or carried across 
the Channel, to enrich the English at the expense 
of whole populations of the working French. 

It is not too much to say that the town never 
recovered from the shock; it is only in the last ten 
years that the old prosperity seems coming back 
again. ^ Already much of what John Evelyn saw, 

1 The years after the Revocation of the Edict were unpros- 
perous for many reasons besides the loss of the silk industry: 
it was the time when the inequality and injustice of taxation 
so convincingly pointed out by De Tocqueville was at its 
height. Even in 1761 the Societe d' Agriculture at Tours writes 
to complain bitterly of the unfair pressure of certain feudal 
rights on the country populations. 



boiled 255 

when he came here for nineteen weeks, " took a 
master of the language and studied very dili- 
gently," is gone for ever. " Both the church and 
monastery of Martin are large," he writes, speak- 
ing of buildings which now exist only in name,^ 
" having four square towers, fair organs, and a 
stately altar, where they show the bones and ashes 
of St. Martin, with other reliques. The Mall with- 
out comparison is the noblest in Europe for length 
and shade, having seven rows of the tallest and 
goodliest elms I had ever beheld, the innermost of 
which do so embrace each other and at such a 
height that nothing can be more solemn or majes- 
tical. . . . No city in France exceeds it in 
beauty or delight." This was written before the 
Revocation had devastated the town, Evelyn saw, 
too, the tomb of Ronsard, who died at St. Cosmo 
in 1585, in the chapel of Plessis-lez-Tours, and was 
so fortunate as to meet the Queen of England, who 
was entertained at the archbishop's palace on her 
way to Paris. 

Great efforts had been made to restore the sink- 
ing fortunes of the town, and when Arthur Young 
came here in 1787, he could speak of the "new 
street (the Rue Royale) of large houses, built of 

1 Save for the two towers, with a waste of street between, 
melancholy landmarks of the great church that once existed. 



256 . did 'S. 



owcatne 



hewn white stone with regular fronts," which had 
just been laid out, though even now several of the 
owners refuse to incur the expense of filling up the 
design. " They ought, however, to be unroosted 
if they will not comply," cries the Englishman. He 
saw too several fine pictures in the chapel at Plessis, 
and heard with regret that the corporation had 
ofifered the old trees in the Park for sale. " One 
would not wonder," he reflects frankly enough, " at 
an English corporation sacrificing the ladies' walk 
for plenty of turtle, venison, and madeira; but that 
a French one should have so little gallantry is in- 
excusable." 

But worse things than this were soon to happen. 
In 1792 the town was celebrating a fete to Lib- 
erty, and all the chateaux in the valley suffered in 
the general turmoil. The citizens were busy listen- 
ing to the " Hymn to Great Men," to a " Discourse 
to the Nations," to a " Hymn to Reason," or sing- 
ing tumultuously after this fashion — 

" Les ennemis du nom frangais 
Sur Tours ont forme des projets, 
Mais on les attend la, 
A Tours on les fera 
Voir de vrais sansculottes; 
Vive le son 
Du canon ! " 



^ouzd 267 

In 1815 the enemy were at the gates in earnest: 
the Prussians and the Allies were encamped in St. 
Symphorien. 

But after the fever of the Revolution had some- 
what calmed, after the terrible fighting in La 
Vendee had ceased, Tours began slowly and stead- 
ily to recover, in a quiet prosperous time of harvest 
and repose. These were the days when English 
most did congregate at Tours. The handbook of 
1841 reports two English churches, where not one 
now exists, and speaks of the trout fishing to be had, 
and of the seventy English families who throve and 
multiplied in their new colony among the vine- 
yards. 

The war of 1870 seems to have frightened them 
away. In the autumn of that year Leon Gambetta, 
escaping in his balloon from Paris, carried on the 
Government in the Palais de Justice of Tours be- 
fore the Assembly at Bordeaux was constituted. 
It was in that winter that the Germans occupied the 
heights above the town, which was absolutely in- 
capable of making any defence. But the traces of 
the so-called " siege " have vanished, and the town 
has resumed its quiet advance towards material 
prosperity. 

The statue of Balzac looks down the Rue Royale 

he loved so well, towards the Quai where Rabelais 
Vol. n.— 17 



268 did '^. 



ouzaine 



and Descartes look upon the town; behind them 
stretches the valley of the Loire. It is a fascinating 
valley, full of history, full of romance. The Plan- 
tagenets have lived and died here, the Black Prince 
has fought up and down the river, Sir Walter 
Raleigh served his first campaign here with the 
Protestants, even King Arthur has been heard of at 
Amboise. Here are scenes that Turner has painted, 
where Landor and Wordsworth have watched the 
setting sun; here in the heart of France, in the 
most French of all her provinces, there seems a 
special interest for the Englishman, a special beauty 
in this royal river flowing past Fontevrault to the 
sea, in this broad smiling landscape clad with 
vines, 

" Where from the frequent bridge, 
Like emblems of infinity, 
The trenched waters run from sky to sky." 



Chj^endl 



toco 



Chppendix 

I. — Itinerary 

The traveller may find it convenient to have a few 
other places in Tours and its neighbourhood pointed 
out for his especial notice. Information concern- 
ing them is easily procurable (especially from the 
books already recommended), and they are col- 
lected here merely to avoid his missing them. Be- 
tween the two best hotels, the Hotel de I'Univers 
and the Hotel du Faisan, there is very little choice; 
the first is on the Boulevards not far from the 
main line station, the second in the Rue Royale: 
both are good. The Rue Royale (or Nationale, 
according to your politics) runs straight through 
the town from the Palais de Justice on the Boule- 
vards to the great stone bridge over the Loire. At 
No. 39, Balzac was born. On the Quai to the 
right, in what is now a barrack, is the Tour de 
Guise. In visiting the Cathedral, the traveller 
should especially notice the old glass in the choir, 
the tomb of Charles VIII. 's children, and the ex- 
traordinary staircase poised upon the keystone of 

S61 



262 6U "B. 



outatne 



an arch, by which he will be conducted to the sum- 
mit of one of the towers. Two great towers are 
all that is left of St. Martin's Cathedral and Abbey. 
Near the Tour de Charlemagne the Cloister of St. 
Martin must particularly be seen, as one of the 
finest examples of Renaissance carving in the town. 
The date of this cloister is given as 1508 in p. 141 
of M. Grandmaison's Documents Inedits pour Servir 
a I'Histoire des Arts en Touraine. The Church of 
St. Julien, too, near the Rue Royale, should be 
visited : it had been begun by the historian Gregory 
of Tours in 576, was destroyed in 856 by the Nor- 
mans, and of the later church little but the western 
tower of eleventh-century work remains; the pres- 
ent structure is chiefly of the fourteenth century, 
and has not long been restored to its present state 
from the terrible decay and disrepair into which it 
had fallen. In 18 17, Mr. W. D. Fellowes, who 
has published notes of his travels on the way to 
the Monastery of La Trappe, arrived at Tours and 
notices its foot pavement in the Rue Royale, " a 
thing seldom to be met with in this country," 
though at that time Tours was almost an English 
colony. The traveller was put up in the " Hotel 
St. Julien." In the side aisles of the church were 
stalls for horses and cattle, the centre was a " re- 
mise " for carriages. 



Chppendix 263 

The Bank in the Rue de Commerce, where circu- 
lar notes are exchanged, is the famous Hotel Gouin, 
a beautiful example of early French Renaissance. 
The Hotel de Beaune, in the Rue St. Francois, is 
another example of the same type, and the chim- 
neypiece in the Hotel de la Boule d'Or must also 
be seen. The house of Tristan I'Hermite has been 
already mentioned. In the Place du Grand Mar- 
che is a fine fountain put up in 15 lo by Jacques 
de Beaune Semblangay, whose house is in the cor- 
ner of the same square. M. Grandmaison pub- 
lishes the details of the fountain's construction from 
the archives of Tours. Its four blocks of marble 
came from Genoa. Michel Colombe directed the 
sculptors, Bastein and Martin les Francois. It was 
originally surmounted by a crown and flowers, 
above which was a bronzed and gilt crucifixion, 
but all these ornaments have now disappeared. 
There is an excellent theatre in the Rue de la 
Scellerie, nearly opposite the best bookseller. 
Baths in the Loire are to be found on the island 
which helps to support the suspension bridge; and 
there is a good library. 

At St. Symphorien across the river is a quaint 
Romanesque cross church, " swamped by a flam- 
boyant nave," with a good western door. At St. 
Radegonde, farther to the east along the bank, 



264 Old ^. 



owcaine 



the church is built against the rock, in which a 
chapel is excavated that communicates with the 
tower. The Abbey of Marmoutier is in the same 
direction. Crossing the river again, on the far 
side of the town to the south and west the traveller 
will find Plessis-lez-Tours and the Abbey of St. 
Como. Still farther out into the country is the 
Romanesque church of Villandry, which, says Mr, 
Petit, " combines in itself the chief characteristics 
one or other of which is found in most churches 
of this district." The chateau there, too, with the 
beautiful flower-beds surrounding it, is well worth 
a visit. The finest conservatories in Touraine, 
almost in France, are to be seen at M. Mame's 
chateau of Les Touches, near Savonnieres, not far 
from Ballan; there are also some strange grottos, 
" caves gouttieres," in the neighbourhood. Mr. 
Fellowes in 1817 seems to have made a strangely 
fragmentary visit. Out of all the chateaux he chose 
only Chanteloup, Menard, the favourite home of 
Madame de Pompadour, and Valangay, the seat of 
M. de Talleyrand, from which the English Govern- 
ment failed in its attempt to rescue Ferdinand VII. 
of Spain by means of a certain mysterious foreign 
baron. 

One more excursion may be advised, to the 
Chateau d'Usse, now in the possession of the Comte 



Chppendlx 265 

de Blacas, the heir of Madame la Comtesse de la 
Rochejaquelein, an exceedingly picturesque old 
pile in well-kept grounds near the junction of the 
Indre with the Loire. There are some interesting 
rooms and some good pictures, especially in the 
Gallerie de Vauban. The greatest treasure there is 
what is known as the " Buste d'Usse," a Florentine 
work of the late fifteenth century; it formerly was 
in the collection of the famous Fouquet, and M. 
Leon Palustre considers that it represents Hercule, 
Due de Ferrara (1471-1505). In any case, it is one 
of the finest pieces of portrait sculpture to be seen 
in Touraine, not excepting the bust of Francis near 
Loches, and it should on no account be missed. 
Many places might yet be mentioned, but the typi- 
cal chateau and churches have been pointed out, 
and in the map, which shows only a few details for 
the sake of being quite clear, their relative position 
and accessibility can be quickly seen. Further in- 
formation can be easily procured, and as to railways 
the useful Guide Bijou d'Indre et Loire may be 
safely and profitably used. The inns are almost 
uniformly good and clean. 



266 Old Ooutatne 



11. — Manuscripts and Books 

The town is particularly fortunate in the abun- 
dance of Manuscripts and Documents which it 
possesses. In the Archives Departmentales d'ln- 
dre et Loire, kept in the Prefecture, are great quan- 
tities of title-deeds and records preserved from the 
old religious houses, among which is the grant of 
Louis le Debonnaire in 837 to found the Abbey of 
Cormery, with a seal attached, a deed of Hugh 
Capet, and other treasures; in the Hotel de Ville 
are the Archives Communales, which are among 
the most important in France. Mgr. Chevalier 
gives a list of their contents. Detailed accounts of 
parish expenses since 1358 are preserved, municipal 
documents since 1408, and numbers of letters and 
other manuscripts from 1140 onwards. The politi- 
cal archives stretch fairly continuously from the 
English occupation in 1347 to 18 15 and Waterloo. 
Many most valuable facts with reference to the old 
Mystery Plays and theatrical representations are 
also to be found here (copied by M. Andre Salmon), 
and the diligence of M. Grandmaison has brought 
to light all that is known of the Clouets, and es^ 
pecially of Jean Clouet H., whose illuminated Livy 
is preserved in the town library, which also contains 
the Hours of Charles V. and of Anne of Brittany, a 



Ubppendix 267 

thirteenth-century Terence, and many other rari- 
ties. But the librarian shall describe them himself. 
" La Bibliotheque de Tours, installee rue Nationale 
90, dans les batiments de I'ancienne fabrique royale 
de soieries (lampas et damas de Tours), contient 
aujourd'hui cent mille volumes environ. lis pro- 
viennent, en grande partie, des librairies ou biblio- 
theques des abbayes et convents qui existaient 
autrefois a Tours. Notons particulierement les 
riches et precieux fonds des Benedictins de I'abbaye 
de Marmoutier, des chanoines de la collegiale de 
Saint Martin, et de I'eglise metropolitaine de Saint 
Gatien. Dans la serie de Manuscrits, au nombre 
de pres de 1800, on remarque plusieurs Sacramen- 
taires, sortis de I'Ecole d'enluminure et de calli- 
graphic a Tours, fondee par le celebre Alcuin au 
VIII""^ siecle. L'un d'eux, ecrit en lettres d'or sur 
magnifique velin et remontant au VIII"^ siecle, est 
I'evangeliaire sur lequel les rois de France pretaient 
serment lorsqu'ils etaient regus abbes honoraires de 
Saint Martin." This MS. was collated in 1884 
with that in the British Museum; it is one of the 
finest specimens of its kind in the world, and in 
almost perfect preservation. A MS. of Ovid has 
also been published by the Clarendon Press in 1888, 
and a Hebrew Bible of the fifteenth century was 
annotated in 1884. 



268 Old ^owcai 



ine 



" Dans les documents liturgiques d'un grand 
interet," continues M. Duboz, " on remarque un 
Missel a I'usage de I'eglise anglicane (sic)] ce 
manuscrit, qui a appartenu primitivement a la 
famille de Hungerford, devint la propriete des 
seigneurs de Bueil. Notons encore un ravissant 
manuscrit persan contenant les poesies de Hafiz, 
intitulees ' Le Divan.' Enfin d'importants docu- 
ments sur I'histoire de la Touraine, copies dans 
divers depots publics de I'Angleterre, sont aujourd'- 
hui conserves dans cette bibliotheque, qui n'est pas 
moins riche en editions du commencement de 
I'imprimerie; elle possede plus de 400 Incunables, 
parmi lesquels se trouvent un superbe exemplaire 
de la Bible de Mayence (1462), un exemplaire 
unique des * Coutumes de Touraine,' et un magni- 
fique Missel sur velin a I'usage de Tours (1485)." 
The library is open every week-day (except fete- 
days) from 1st April to 30th September from 12 
till 6; from ist October till 30th March from 10 
A.M. till 4, and from 7 p.m. till 9.30. 

III. — Pictures 

The valley of the Loire is peculiarly rich in 

pictures by Jean and Francois Clouet and their 

school. At Chenonceaux, among many other 

valuable portraits, is a fine Catherine de Medicis 



Uhppendlx 269 

and a clean-shaven monkish-looking head of 
Henry III. At Azay-le-Rideau is the richest col- 
lection of all — another Henry HI., dressed very 
much like a woman, an excellent half-length of 
Charles IX,, and many other examples of the 
Cloiiets, of De Brissac, and Corneille de Lyon; 
best of all is the equestrian portrait. Mrs. Mark 
Pattison has described it as follows. "The King 
is represented about half life-size on horseback. 
He wears a rich Court costume of black reUeved 
by white, and the trappings of his horse show 
the same colours. . . . The sombre figure 
of the mounted King, swarthy, dififiicult of speech, 
gazing outwards with concentrated intention, 
habited in black, and set in a framework of gray 
half tones, haunts the recollection with the viv- 
idness of actual vision; for the subject, which 
seems to offer in itself weird suggestions of a 
phantom magic, is realised with tangible definite- 
ness of conception, and rendered with unflinching 
fidelity to the solid aspect of real life." Other 
fine pictures in the collection of the Marquis de 
Biencourt at Azay-le-Rideau are the portrait of 
Ambroise Pare, surgeon of Henry HI., in the 
library, and of Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., 
in the same room. At my last visit to Azay-le- 
Rideau, almost a year after Chapter XXIL was 



270 Old ^. 



outatne 



written, there were a few changes in the arrange- 
ment of the pictures, which will be noticed in com- 
paring my description of them with what a visitor 
may be shown at present. Clouet's " Catherine de 
Medicis " (for instance) is now removed to the 
upper rooms. A few more pictures in this same 
treasure-house of art should also be noticed. Next 
to the Clouet of Charles IX. is another by the same 
artist and with the same green background, of Odet 
de Coligny. Other examples of F. Clouet are the 
" Claude, wife of Francis I." and the " Henry VIII. 
of England " ; pictures of this school are " La 
Reine Margot " and " Marguerite de Navarre." 
There are also some exceptionally fine bronze me- 
dallions in the lower passage, representing Cather- 
ine de Medicis, Henry II., Charles IX., and Henry 
III. In the private room of M. le Marquis de Bien- 
court are Marie de Medicis, perhaps by Rubens, the 
Marechal de Luxembourg, and Turenne by Cham- 
pagne, whose finest example here is the Marie de 
Medicis on the lower floor. The portraits of Marie 
Leczinska (in red) and her husband are also good, 
and there are several copies of Cardinal Fleury with 
the same placid smile, and soft white cloak excel- 
lently rendered; with many more which well de- 
serve a closer inspection than will be possible for 
most travellers. 



Ubppendlx 271 

The pictures at the Chateau of Cheverny must 
also be seen. The immense gallery of historical 
portraits at Beauregard are remarkable more for 
their interest and variety than for any especial 
artistic merit : they leave the impression of having 
all been done by the same hand. The series begins 
upon the wall in which the entrance door opens, 
and at the spectator's right hand of that wall, begin- 
ing at Philippe de Valois, born in 1328, and going 
from right to left entirely round the room. They 
are roughly divided into reigns by divisions in the 
panels. In the second division are Philippe de 
Commines, Caesar Borgia, and a good portrait of 
Anne de Bretagne looking fat and comfortable, but 
determined; in the third division are the Cardinal 
d'Amboise (very different from the more spirited 
likeness at Chaumont) and Amerigo Vespucci; in 
the fourth, Florimond Robertet is the best. There 
is also a portrait of Sir Thomas More. In the fifth 
are " Francois Pisarre " and Diane de Poitiers; in 
the sixth, Jehan Destre, " Grand Maistre d'Artil- 
lerie " with a beard like a pufif of smoke; in the 
seventh, Marie Stuart in a high collar; in the eighth, 
Henri de Guise and Francis Drake; in the ninth, 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, in old age, and what 
is perhaps the best piece of work in the room, a 
large Henry IV. on horseback, with his good- 



272 did %, 



outatne 



natured face and gray beard beneath a most strange 
helmet, surrounded by D'Arnaud, Biron, and Sully. 
The tenth and last division has a portrait of the 
famous " Due de Bukinkan," a very feeble produc- 
tion after the handsome face of Villiers at Hampton 
Court. In the museums at Blois and at Tours 
there are also a very few good pictures which must 
be picked out from a mass of inferior painting. 

Of the historical portraits in the Ecole Franqaise 
at the Louvre Galleries in Paris only two can be 
ascribed with certainty to Francois Clouet. Among 
all the examples of the Ecole Clouet, the two finest 
are those numbered 107 and 108 in the catalogue 
edited by M. Frederic Villot. The first is that of 
Charles IX., a small full-length figure, three- 
quarter face, with black coat buttoned to the ruff 
and embroidered with gold; the right hand, carry- 
ing his gloves, rests on the back of a red velvet 
sofa; two green curtains form the background: a 
copy of this, life-size, exists in the Imperial Gallery 
at Vienna. The second is the portrait of his wife, 
Elizabeth of Austria; her head is turned to the left, 
three-quarter face, the hair lifted up from the fore- 
head; she wears a rich gold necklace, and a dress 
of cloth of gold embroidered with precious stones.- 
These two portraits may be taken as types of Fran- 
<;ois Clouet's style, in distinguishing copies from 



Cbppendix 273 

the few productions that are left of this master's 
actual handiwork. No. 109, a head of Francis I., 
of extreme delicacy and accuracy of presentment, 
is also probably by a Clouet, but whether by Jean or 
by his son Francois cannot be determined; it looks 
as if the basis of the painting were a thin gold 
or silver background on which the surface tints 
were afterwards applied. In the same room is 
another portrait of Francis I., two of Henry II., one 
full length, the other of smaller size, perhaps a copy, 
wearing the medallion of the Order of St. Michael 
and the same black dress striped with gold. No. 
113 is Francois de Lorraine, Due de Guise; No. 
124 is Catherine de Medicis. Note also No. 732, 
Gaspard de Coligny; 729, Charles IX.; and 653, 
" le tres victorieux Roy de France, Charles VII.," 
a repulsive face beneath a hideous hat. No. 656 
(a ball at the Court of Henry III.) will give a good 
idea of the costume of the latter half of the six- 
teenth century. These last are all by unknown 
artists. 

It may help to complete this note if I mention 
very briefly a few places in England where pictures 
by the Clouets and their school exist, or where the 
portraits of persons connected with Touraine may 
be seen. First and foremost is the great collection 

at Hampton Court, which contains Eleanor of 
Vol. II.— 18 



274 did %. 



outattie 



Spain, wife of Francis L, by Jean Clouet (No. 561 
in the Catalogue published by Mr. Ernest Law), 
and a Francis I. attributed to Holbein, which Mrs. 
Mark Pattison considers to be by a French hand 
(No, 598 in the same Catalogue). This portrait 
gives an extraordinary sense of nakedness; the 
complexion is of an almost porcine pink, and the 
expression brutal. There is also a portrait of a 
boy, attributed to Janet, described as the Dauphin 
FranQois, son of Henry 11, The writer already 
quoted considers this to be Henry IH. in youth, 
and says, " Perhaps the whole of Frangois Clouet's 
work does not afford a better example than the 
Hampton Court portrait, of that art of giving life 
which was attributed to him in chief by his con- 
temporaries." In the same collection note No. 342 
(in the Catalogue above quoted), the meeting at 
the Field of the Cloth of Gold; No. 407, Louis 
XHL, by Belcamp; No. 411, Marie de Medicis, by 
Pourbus; No. 418, Henry IV., by the same artist; 
No. 566, by Janet, of Francis I. and a lady, 
variously described as Diane de Poitiers, and as his 
wife Eleanor (No. 561), already mentioned; No. 
582, La Belle Gabrielle; No. 592, a French noble- 
man, holding a copy of Petrarch, by Holbein, with 
long straight nose and narrow eyes, a close brown 
beard, black cape, and a low black round cap; No. 



Cbppendix 275 

617, Marie de Lorraine, mother of the Queen of 
Scots, just misses being clever, and perhaps suffers 
by contrast with the magnificently beautiful por- 
trait in No. 622. 

At Hatfield the finest picture is the " Mary 
Queen of Scots," by P. Oudry, 1578; there is 
another of the same princess, in a Brabant costume, 
that is pretty but not authentic. Other paintings 
are Francois de Chatillon; Seigneur d'Andelot, a 
copy after Pourbus; Louise de Lorraine, Queen of 
Henry HL; Henry IH., King of France, by F. 
Pourbus; Catherine de Medicis, a copy after 
Clouet; Henry, Duke of Guise, a copy, with a 
large and realistic scar on the left cheek; and Henry 
IH., another copy, after F. Pourbus. The best 
examples of art at Hatfield are portraits which have 
no connection with the present subject. 

The pictures with which we are concerned at 
Stafford House are all much finer. There are a 
good Henry HL, Jeanne d'Albret, Catherine de 
Medicis, and Frangois, Due d'Alen(;on, all by Fran- 
cois Clouet; and a Francis I., with his sister Mar- 
guerite, by Jean Clouet. At Castle Howard are 
other examples of the same school. 

The portrait of Marie Stuart, reproduced in 
Chapter XIV., is from a painting. There is a chalk 
drawing of Marie Stuart, at the period of her mar- 



276 did '^, 



outatne 



riage to Francois Dauphin of France in 1558, 
which was taken from life by " Jannet " or Francois 
Clouet, who became " peintre du roy " after the 
death of his father the second Jean Clouet in 1541. 
A larger photograph by Braun of this drawing is 
now in the National Portrait Gallery, and according 
to the Catalogue revised by Mr. Lionel Cust in 1896, 
it was the sketch for a finished miniature painted by 
the same artist, which is now in the royal collection 
at Windsor Castle, and was in the possession of 
King Charles I. at Whitehall in 1639. The origi- 
nal drawing is in the Bibliotheque Nationale at 
Paris, and was formerly in the Bibliotheque Sainte 
Genevieve. This Francois Clouet was probably at 
Tours before 1523, when his father Jean (from 
whom he inherited the name of " Jannet ") left 
Touraine for Paris. For the work of the Clouets, 
see Mrs. Mark Pattison, op. cit. 

There is a view of Chambord in an old col- 
lection of prints bound together in the Library 
of Wadham College. It is catalogued in the 
British Museum (the only other place where I 
know of its existence) as " Veiles des belles mai- 
sons de France (les places, portes, fontaines, egli- 
ses, et maisons de Paris; veiies des plus beaux 
endroits de Versailles; diverses veiies de Chantilly) 
designees et gravees par Perelle." (Paris, 1685, 



Chppendix 277 

obi. 4to.) Brit. Mus. 564, f. i. France, pt. i, f. 
136, b. 

In conclusion there are drawings by Etienne 
Delaulne in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, men- 
tioned by Mrs. Mark Pattison. Among them oc- 
curs a profile of Marie Stuart, the reverse of a piece 
struck at the accession of her husband, Francis II. 
There are also coins for the reigns of Henry II., 
Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. The book 
is labelled as by Le Petit Bernard, and formed part 
of the Douce collection. 



IV. — Authorities 

It may be useful for purposes of reference to in- 
sert a few more authorities which have not been 
previously mentioned. 

Among guide-books — La Loire, by Touchard 
Lafosse (1856), a large work in five volumes; 
Touraine (including a bibliography), by Bellanger; 
Feudal Castles in France, by Mrs. Byrne; Historic 
Chateaux, by A. B. Cochrane, M.P.; a Handbook 
of Tours, publishea in 1841; La Cathedrale de 
Tours, by Mgr. Chevalier; Le Chateau de Chambord 
and Le Chateau de Blois, by M. de la Saussaye; 
Langeais, by Maurice Brincourt, with drawings by 
Roy; Laches, by the Abbe E. Hat; Le Chateau 



278 6Ld 'S. 



ouzatne 



d'Amboise, edited by M. Guilland Verger, Tours; 
Lettre a M. de Caumont sur une Excursion en 
Touraine, by M. de Cougny, and several other 
works by Mgr. Chevalier; Fontevrault, by M. Mali- 
faud. 

In periodical literature there has lately appeared 
an article on " Castle Life in the Middle Ages," in 
Scribner's for January 1889, by the two Blashfields, 
who contributed " The Paris of the Three Muske- 
teers " to the same magazine for August 1890. 
In the English Illustrated for February 1891, 
" Thoughts in Prison," by Mrs. Watts Jones, con- 
tains a careful copy of nearly all the best inscrip- 
tions in Loches. In Harper's for June 1891 is a 
short article by Louis Frechette on Blois, Cham- 
bord, and Amboise. 

Of contemporary authorities, it has already been 
pointed out that the numerous works published 
under the auspices of the Ecole des Chartes are of 
the highest value. For the Italian history, and 
much else of interest in the reigns of Louis XL and 
Charles VIIL, the history of Philippe de Commines 
has been used. Throughout, the works of Villon, 
Rabelais, Clement Marot, Ronsard, Regnier, Du- 
mas, Balzac, De Vigny, and the pamphlets of P. L. 
Courier, illustrate in their own way the manner of 
the time. There is far more historically accurate 



Cbppendix 279 

matter in many of the novels of Dumas than he is 
often credited with; his fidelity, in particular, to 
the old Memoires is astonishing, though he has not 
always so freely acknowledged the sources of his 
narratives as in the reference to the Memoires of 
the actual D'Artagnan prefixed to his Three Muske- 
teers. The picture of the sixteenth century given 
in the older trilogy — La Dame de Montsoreau, La 
Reine Margot, and Les Quarante Cinq — is a very 
accurate one. Les Deux Dianes touches on events 
in the reign of Henry 11. , and contains a vivid and 
fairly true relation of the " Tumult of Amboise," 
which is again described in Balzac's Catherine de 
Medicis. De Vigny publishes with great care 
many of the manuscripts and evidences for the 
story of the conspiracy of Cinq Mars and De Thou, 
in his romance of Cinq Mars. 

For the best idea of Mary Queen of Scots, the 
" Marie Stuart " of French history, see the article 
on her life and character in the Encyclopcedia Bri- 
tannica, which is perhaps the finest piece of short 
biographical work ever written, and has been re- 
published, with an important additional note, in 
Swinburne's Miscellanies, p. 323. 

For further details as to the Abbe de Ranee, 
whose " tragical history " was shortly sketched in 
Chapter XXIIL, see the Memoires of the Count de 



280 Old ^ 



outaine 



Comminges. As to the Trappistes, see Reglements 
de VAhhaye de la Trappe, par Dom Armand de 
Ranee, and the narrative of Dom Claude Lancelot, 
1667. Mr. W. D. Fellowes, in A Visit to the Mon- 
astery of La Trappe in 181 7, etc., says that the in- 
scription on De Ranee's portrait there runs as 
follows : — " Mort en 1700 a pres de yy ans et de 40 
ans {sic) de la plus austere penitence." This would 
give his age approximately at the time of the epi- 
sode mentioned in the text. The Monastery of La 
Trappe is one of the most ancient abbeys of the 
order of Benedictines, established in 1140 by 
Rotrou, Comte de la Perche, as a thankoffering; 
by 1660 its monks not only lived in luxury, but 
were so famous for their scandalous excesses of 
every kind, that they were called the Banditti of La 
Trappe. It was to these men that De Ranee came 
and reformed the abbey (which he had the reputa- 
tion of actually founding), by introducing the 
terribly austere rules for which the order is famous. 
De Ranee himself gives an interesting account of 
the first of the many visits of the unfortunate James 
IL to the Monastery in 1690. In Champfleury, 
Histoire de la Caricature, there is much interesting 
matter with reference not only to published sketches 
but to architecture, and even dramatic perform- 
ances, during the period I have chiefly dealt with. 



Ubpperidlx 281 

In connection with these latter, he quotes a long 
passage from De Thou's Memoires describing the 
entry of Francis II. into Tours after leaving Am- 
boise; both places, as we have seen, were famous 
for their Mystery Plays and allegorical representa- 
tions, and on this occasion an imaginative baker 
equipped his son in a manner more likely to amuse 
the spectators than to gratify the Court : " tous 
disoient que cette representation etoit une vive 
image de I'etat du royaume, gouverne par un roi 
encore enfant, qui avoit pour ministres des etran- 
gers qui I'avoient rendu aveugle." See also La 
Satire en France au Moyen Age, by C. Lenient; and 
for another account of the beginning of the fifteenth 
century, which should have been mentioned earlier, 
see the edition by M. de Viriville of the Chronique 
de la Pucelle, by Guillaume Cousinot; an earlier 
writer of the same name wrote the Geste des nobles 
Francoys, etc., MS. 10,297 in Bibl. Nat. The 
Journal du Siege d'Orleans in 1428 might also be 
added. 

Passing to later authorities in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the year 1588 almost claims a bibliography to 
itself. The most complete account of the murder 
of Guise, and the surrounding circumstances, is 
given by Frangois Miron Medecin du Roy Henry 
III. Other authorities are the Memoires de VEstoile, 



282 uLd Ooiitaine 

Sully's Economies Royales, and the Chronologie 
Novennaire of Palma Cayet. Further details will 
be found in " Agreable Recit de ce qui s'est passe 
aux dernieres barricades de Paris," 1588; '' Nou- 
velles de la Coiir, escrites de Blois, Lundy dernier, 
dix septieme jour d'Octobre," 1588 (which contains 
the election lists) ; " Harangue prononcee par Mon- 
sieur de Bourges aux trois estats assemblez au chas- 
teau de Blois le jour saincte Catherine 25 Nov. a 
quatre heures du soir," 1588; " Discours de ce qui 
est arrive a Blois jusques a la mort du due et du 
Cardinal de Guise," 1588 (by a Protestant); Le 
Martyre des deux Freres, 1589 (by a Catholic). In 
La Ligue, by L. Vitet, vol. i. p. 320, are details of 
the exact costume of men and women at the time. 
More information may be found in the Bibliographic 
of Monod. 



V. — Note to the Third Edition 

One of my critics was kind enough to point out 
(in the Spectator some years ago) that the architect 
of the staircase at Blois (described on p. 139 of this 
volume) might have had a naturally reversed shell 
directly to his hand and eye. Such conch, chank, 
or sankha shells are not unknown; they are called 
dakshina varta, " right-twisted," and used to be 



Ubppendix 283 

worth their weight in gold, as holiest cosmic sym- 
bols, to the Hindus. They now cost some four or 
five pounds in India. To this I will only add that 
on some future occasion I hope to be able to treat 
the whole subject of this spiral staircase, and of 
others like it, in a manner more complete than is 
possible in a book of which architectural questions 
form necessarily but a small part. 



% 



ote 



As the " dernier mot " (in English) upon French 
art, I insert part of the speech of Sir Frederick 
Leighton to the students of the Royal Academy 
{The Times, nth December 1891): — 

The French Renaissance 

" And now we turn to a wholly new phase in 
French art, the expression of a new order of ideas 
and of materially altered social conditions. During 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the prestige 
of the fighting nobility had suffered much through 
the introduction of artillery and the reverses of the 
English wars; the middle classes, on the other hand, 
had, under the favour of the kings, steadily risen in 
importance. Before the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury the printing press had begun to scatter knowl- 
edge far and wide. The discovery of a new 
continent across the Atlantic was stirring the 
imagination of the Old World. But it was a 
discovery within that Old World which was to ex- 
ercise the deepest influence on the intellectual con- 

285 



286 Old ^. 



outatne 



dition of France, the discovery of Italy, through 
the expeditions of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., 
for a discovery it may be called, though it must not 
be assumed that Italian influence was entirely 
absent in France until that period. Already in the 
middle of the fifteenth century, Rene of Anjou, 
himself a painter and the friend of the leading 
humanists of his time, had made his Court at 
Tarascon a centre of culture and of art, and em- 
ployed the labour of Italian artists. Within the 
first half of the century, too, a great painter, Jehan 
Fouquet, had brought back from Italy a marked 
leaning to the new classic spirit. Nevertheless it 
was not until the return of the romantic stripling, 
Charles VIII., with the flower of the French no- 
bility from his futile and fantastic campaign that the 
desire for all things Italian took wide and lasting 
hold of the French — at least, among the nobility — 
and this enthusiasm, further whetted during the 
chequered campaigns of his successor, Louis XII., 
grew at a rapid pace. It was not, however, till the 
second decade of the sixteenth century that, 
through the example of that brilliant dilettante, 
Francis I., the Italian contagion showed important 
results. Within the thirty-five years of his reign 
a host of palatial buildings were raised in a new 
style, which, if it had not, as had the style it pushed 



%ote 



287 



aside, the virtue of indigenous growth, was cer- 
tainly marked by extreme charm and beauty. It 
was not, I say, of spontaneous growth, but neither 
was it a wholly alien product, for the people from 
whom it was adopted had in past times left on the 
more vivacious Gallic stock distinct traces of its 
blood, and the French have not ceased to this day 
to claim kinship with the Imperial race. Mean- 
while, borrowed though the new style was, the 
French at once moulded it to their own genius, and 
produced a result distinctly personal to themselves; 
and the modifications they introduced in the Italian 
style were just such as you would expect from the 
different temper of the race. The restrained and 
sweet gravity which delights us in the purest ex- 
amples of trans-Alpine Renaissance is, it must be 
admitted, too often wanting in the French work 
of the same class; and if, as I believe, the rank of 
the work of art is according to the dignity of the 
emotion it stirs in the beholder, then the creations 
of the great Italians rise to a higher level than those 
of the artists of the French Renaissance. For 
vitality and variety, on the other hand, for exuber- 
ance of fancy, for resourceful ingenuity of construc- 
tion, and for a delicate sense of rhythm and 
proportion, the superiority of the work of the 
French is, in my opinion, conspicuous. Above all 



288 Old '15^ 



ouzatne 



things, it is their own, and for this reason it seems 
to me that the jealous investigation which has been 
noticeable in recent times in France as to how far 
Italian arts have been unduly credited with the 
building of certain of the masterpieces of the Re- 
naissance in that country is, however valuable in the 
interests of truth, of no great moment to the dig- 
nity of French art. Close study of documents has 
led, as is well shown, for instance, in Palustre's 
beautiful instalment of a History of French Renais- 
sance, to the dismissal of claims hitherto advanced 
in various cases in favour of Italian artists; it is 
bringing into greater prominence the names of 
native maistres magons whose claims had been un- 
derrated, men who had inherited traditions which 
made them greatly superior, as builders at all 
events, to the artists who came amongst them from 
beyond the Alps. But, apart from such inquiries, 
it is patent that all but every work of the French 
Early Renaissance, however it may have originated, 
bears the unmistakable stamp of the fusing energy 
of French genius. That the style was not born 
in France is a fact no one can challenge; that it 
was recast in that country into a distinctly French 
thing no narrowness could dispute. 



9Bote 



289 



French Domestic Architecture 

The keynote of the Renaissance movement being 
the assertion of the beauty of life and the dignity 
of man, its influence was naturally most felt in con- 
nection with secular life. The great era of church 
building was past, and, indeed, for a population 
reduced by long and wasting wars the existing 
places of worship were not insufificient. The main 
determining motive of artistic activity under Fran- 
cis I. was the ambition of the King and his nobles 
to multiply places of delight for their residence, 
especially in the country, and to replace by sights 
of beauty, such as they had learned to love and 
covet in Italy, the moated gloom of their ancestral 
chateaux, built and well suited for purposes of pro- 
tection and defence, but little in harmony with the 
tastes of the pleasure-loving Court and the light- 
hearted young King who led it. Prodigious and 
breathless was the activity with which chateaux 
were raised, first in the Royal province watered by 
the Loire, and then in and about Paris. It would 
be fruitless to enumerate at length even the chief 
of the stately buildings which from that time to the 
death of Henry III. occupied the energies of French 
architects; nor can I do more here than name a few 
of the foremost of these considerable men, such as in 
Vol. II.— 19 



290 uLd Fontaine 

the first line Jean Bullant and Philibert de I'Orme; 
and in the second, CoHn Biart, Pierre Chambiges, 
Pierre Nepveu, alias Trinqueau, Gadier, Le Prestre, 
and Hector Sohier. It will be more profitable to 
note a few points in connection with the evolution 
of the style itself. Although, as I have said, the 
great outburst of activity in the new direction coin- 
cides with the reign of Francis, Italian influence 
had already begun to assert itself in architecture as 
in other things in the preceding century, through 
Charles VIII. , at Amboise, for instance, and more 
effectually under his successor, who built the east 
wing of the Chateau de Blois. 

In the case of secular buildings the transition 
from the later Gothic was facilitated by the fact that 
square-headed openings prevailed already in that 
style, of which, too, the incontinence in ornament 
was acceptable to the exuberant spirit of the new 
art. The character of that ornament, however, was 
entirely changed; fantastic, foreign arabesque took 
the place of the floral decoration which had been 
one of the glories of the French school. Mean- 
while the love for aspiring forms lived on, and the 
tendency to complexity died hard. The wealth of 
sky-line produced by spires and pinnacles was per- 
petuated in high-pitched roofs, turrets, and tall, 



%ote 



291 



buttressed dormer windows. The sky-line of Cham- 
bord could have been conceived only by an archi- 
tect having Gothic tradition in his blood. In other 
matters, too, we find the Gothic habit surviving. 
The external winding staircase, for instance, was 
long preserved, and you may see on a dainty 
fagade of the time of Francis I. the survival of the 
grouped shaft in a fanciful colonnette engaged on 
the face of a pilaster. 

The days of civil strife and butchery in which so 
many noble lives were quenched in blood, the dark 
days of the Huguenot persecution, were not auspi- 
cious for the growth of art, and with the close of 
the century we find life and spontaneity at a low 
ebb — little production, a tendency now to heavy 
monotony and now to barocque redundancy, and a 
lack of sense and fitness which admitted of mask- 
ing with a ponderous classic fagade churches built 
on the scheme of, if not with the forms of, ogival 
architecture. Officialism, too, in artistic matters 
was at hand, and soon that implacable organiser 
Colbert was to regulate the arts, also by Royal 
decree, and to found an academy which admitted 
only one saving creed. The frigid pomp, the artifi- 
cial graces of the structures inspired by the " Roi 
Soleil " — majestic in the many-storied wig which 



292 Old ^omaine 

encircled his retreating brow — how far are they 
from the radiant daintiness, the joyous freedom of 
the palaces and pleasances which sprang up in the 
days and at the beck of that truly sunny Sovereign 
Francis I. ! 



Other Artistic Developments 

To that period let us for one brief moment revert 
to notice, however summarily, the parallel develop- 
ment of painting and sculpture. In the latter art 
we have already recorded the names of Jean Goujon 
and Germain Pilon. These great artists were not 
without forerunners, of whom, no doubt, Michel 
Columbe was the most gifted, though his works 
lack both suppleness and definiteness of artistic 
purpose. I should name, also, Nicholas Bachelier 
and Giusti, the latter a family of Italians settled in 
Tours, but true to their nationality in the character 
of their work. 

Turning now briefly to painting we find in the 
sixteenth century but little to rejoice us. Yet a 
few considerable names redeem it from bareness. 
When Francis I. began to build he did no.t find 
amongst his countrymen painters to whom he could 
entrust the decoration of his numerous palaces. 



%ote 



293 



The elder Clouet was, it is true, already promi- 
nently known, but both he and his more famous suc- 
cessor in the nickname of " Janet " were specially 
and exclusively painters of portraits. There were, 
of course, at the time a number of painters in the 
country; but whilst it may be admitted that Fran- 
cis, in his keen admiration for everything Italian, 
may in some measure have overlooked native talent, 
it is difficult to believe that any very marked per- 
sonality could have failed to assert itself in spite of 
the crushing incubus of the Italian influence — a 
baneful influence, be it said in passing, for it was 
not the influence of Raphael or of Leonardo, of 
Andrea del Sarto or of Titian, with all of whom the 
King was in more or less direct contact, but the 
influence of Cellini, mischievous for all his genius — ■ 
and especially, through their long sojourn in the 
country, that of Primaticcio, II Rosso, and Nicolo 
deir Abate, which weighed on the art of France. 
Nor does the sixteenth century in France boast in 
painting, apart from the Clouets, any name of much 
calibre, except perhaps that of Perreal, and cer- 
tainly that of Jean Cousin, a man whose dignity of 
artistic temper preserved him in great measure from 
the excesses of the school of Parmigiano." 



V 



•> 



>. 



LE RID 
i- I N 



MAP OF THE 

VALLEY OF THE LOIRE 

FOR 

"OLD TOURAINE" 

From the French Government Ordnance survc , ) 

Kilomclro 
I ? I J 3f ?<■ 789'.°'.".".''.". :^ 



\ 






K 


__^ 




Q)nde3C^ 



QjncLeocD 



[Note. — The Appendix has been omitted in the references of this 
Index, and all but the more important of the notes. 
A number, e.g. 34, refers to p. 34 of vol. i. ; when vol. ii. is meant 
it is referred to thus : ii. 34. ] 



Abd-el-Kader, 26 ; ii. 102 

Abd-el-Rahman, ^^ 

Adela, 50 

Adria, 130 

Aegidius, 63 

Agen, ii. 125 

Agincourt, 73, 74, 135, 136, 252 ; 

ii. 133, 145 
Ahlden, ii. 219 
Alaric, 37; ii. 51 
Albret, Charlotte d', ii. 150, 151 

note 
Jeanne d', 262 ; ii. 31, 39, 

42, 102, 107, 113, 171-176 

John d', 231 

Alcuin, 36, 38 and note 
Alenjon, 134, 138 

D', ii. 121 

Due d', 76, 254, 257 

Alexander VI., Pope, 92, 231 ; 

ii. 149, 150 
AUuye, Hotel d', ii. 201 
Alnwick, 89 
Alva, ii. 14 
Amboise, 23, 24, 26, 34, and 

note, 45, 53, 62, 67, 87, 119, 



135, 144, 147, 166, 205, 212, 

222, 269, 289, 304; ii. 12, 27, 

46, 51-77. 107, 209, 245, 253, 

258 
Amboise, Bussy d', 104 and note; 

ii. Ill, 121, 180 

Charles d', 89, 204 

Conspiracy of, 16; ii. 81-104 

Georges d', 93, 94, 182, 

220-241, 257, 302 ; ii. 69, 70, 

149 

Louis d', 89 

• Pierre d', 220 

America, 205 

Amiens, 204 

Ampthill, 136 

Amyot, 213, 273; ii. 12, 169 

Anabaptists, ii. 87 

Ancona, 175 

Andelot, Colonel d', ii. ^^, 82, 87 

Andre, Saint, 297; ii. 12 

Mademoiselle de, ii. 20 

Andrelini, Fausto, ii. 158 
Anet, 238, 295, 296; ii. 15, 77 
Angelo, Michael, 206 ; ii. 76, 

152 



297 



298 



Snd^ 



ex 



Angely, L', ii. 216 
Angers, 35 note, 37, 48, iii; ii. 67 
Bishop of, see Balue, Car- 
dinal 
Angouleme, ii. 244 

Comte d', 70 

Francis of, 235 ; ii. 154 and 

note 

Isabella of, 70 

Madame d', ii. 156 

Marguerite d', 247; ii. 114 

Anjou, Counts of, 23, 37, 39, 42- 

54, 106 
Ducd' (Henri), ii. 113-116, 

176 

■ Hammer of, 46 

Marguerite d', 88 

Marie d', 85, 88, 156, 164 

Rene d', 117, 143, 236 

Annonain, Pont de 1', 54 

Antoine, Tour de St., 152 

Antonine, 34 

Aquitaine, t,t„ 47; ii. 51, 142 

Aramis, ii. 196 

Arbrissel, D', 30, 31, 106-108, 

114 
Arc, Jeanne d', 29, 64, 79-85, 

98,134, 138, 164, 170; ii. 134, 

14s, 213, 232 
Ardier, Paul, ii. 240 
Aremburg, 48 
Argenton, 91 
Aristotelians, ii. 12 
Armada, ii. 181 
Armagnac, 74, 134, 165 ; ii. 68 

Marguerite d', ii. 68 

Armorican Republic, 63 
Arms and armour in Chateau of 
Amboise, ii. 65 note, 66 note 



Arou, ii. 142 

Arques, 71 

Arras, Maitre Jean d', 128 

Artagnan, D', ii. 102, 199 

Artesano, Antonio, 142 

Arthur of Bretagne, 66, 70, 71, 

76 
Arthur, King, ii. 56, 258 
Asti, 126, 130, 140, 141, 143, 

211, 223 
Athens, 35 

Aubercourt, D', ii. 188 
Aubigne, D', ii. 179 
Agrippa, d', 25, 28 ; ii. 97 

note 
Aubin, St., ii. 148 
Austria, Anne of, ii. 23, 232 

Archduke Philip of, ii. 1 54 

Eleanor of, 289 

Autin, Due d', Julie Sophie, 

daughter of, 114 
Auton, Jean d', 180, 183 note, 

229 ; ii. 158 
Autun, 33 

Bishop of, 185-187 

Avalon, Isle of, ii. 56 
Avenelles, Des, ii. 87 
Avice of Gloucester, 70, 1 10 
Avignon, 73, 169; ii. 177, 194 
Aymar, Count of Angouleme, 

no 
Azay-le-Rideau, 24, 58, 67, 151, 

198, 285, 291 ; ii. 34, 132, 222, 

227-237 

Bacbuc, 62 
Bacon, 303 
Baif, De, ii. 164 
Bajazet, 174 



Sndi 



ex 



299 



Balafre, Le, ii. 36, 98, 102 
Ballan, 58, 67, 73 
Balsac, Katherine de, 207 note 
Balue, Cardinal, 89, 174-176, 

226 ; ii. 149, 247 
Balzac, 31, 58, 61, 118; ii. 38, 

131 
Barbarossa, 269 

Barry, Godefroy de, see Renaudie 
Basselin, 169 

Bassompierre, Marechal de, 222 
Bartholomew, Archbishop of 

Tours, 69 
St., ii. 12, 32, 41, 46, 98, 

108, 116 
Baugaredi, or Bagaudse, ii. 55 
Bayard, l8l, 182, 231, 252 ; ii. 

152 
Beaufort, Due de, ii. 22 
Beaujeu, Anne de, 29, 91, 144, 

145, 176, 204, 223; ii. 63 
Beaujoyeulx, M. Balthasar de, ii. 

21 
Beaulieu, 46, 47, 163 and note 
Beaumont, 130 
Beauregard, 24; ii. 240 
Beauvais, ii. 172, 174 
Becket, Thomas, 52, 53, 68, 220 ; 

ii. 32 
Bede, 38 
Bedford, 75, 76 
Beham, Hans-Sebald, 274 
Bellay, Du, 212, 213, 255 note, 

258 note, 260 note, 263, 266 

note, 269, 271 ; ii. 35, 64 
Bellegarde, Due de, ii. 216 
Bellini, 208 
Benedict, St., 53 
Beranger, 86; ii. 36 



Berengaria, 70, 164 

Bernis, ii. 24 

Berri, Duchesse de, 221 ; ii. 37, 

75 
Berthelot, Gilles, 291 ; ii. 227 
Besme, ii. 32, 116 
Besnard, M., 97 
Beuve, Sainte, 113 
Beze, Theodore de, ii. 170 
Biagrasso, 261 
Biencourt, M. le Marquis de, ii. 

229 and note 
Bievre, 30 
Bigne, La, ii. 91 
Binasco, 181 
Biragues, 224 note 
Birco, Thomas, 271 
Biron, ii. 172 
Bizago, ii. 44 
Bizet, Jehan, ii. 144 
Black Prince, 199; ii. 258 
Blanche, La Reine, 70 
Blois, 24, 31, 32, 50, 65, 69, 81, 

95, 113, 130, 135, 138, 142, 

163, 198, 219, 304; ii. 26, 47, 

51, 69, 84, 86, 98, 107, 131- 

202, 213, 237 
Boccaccio, ii. 169 
Bohier, Antoine, 290, 29 1 

Thomas, 281-288 

Boileau, 114 

" Bois de Cerf," ii. 103 

Du, ii. 123 

Boisrobert, ii. 216 note 

Bonne, wife of Charles d'Orleans, 

134, 178 
Bonnivet, 254, 260 ; ii. 72 
Bordeaux, 33 
Bordenaye, De, 172 



300 



Sndi 



ex 



Borgia, Cagsar, 92-95, 181, 224- 

231 ; ii. 149, 150 

Lucrezia, 92 

Bouchet, Jean, ii. 148 

BoulainvilHers, 143 

Bourbon, Antoine de, King of 

Navarre, 262 ; ii. 82 

Antoinette de, ii. 99 

Cardinal de, 97 ; ii. 82- 

100 
Constable of, 186, 257-259, 

303; ii. 232 
Henri de, Comte de Cham- 

bord, 221 

Louise de, 113 

Pierre de, 142, 257 

Renee de, 112, 113 

Suzanne de, 257-259 

Bourg, Du, ii. 84 

Bourges, 35 note, 225, 273 ; ii. 

55 ^^oi^> 149 

Archbishop of, ii. 182 

Le Roi de, 75, 164 

Bourree, Jean, 199-286 

Bracieux, ii. 201 

Bragelonne, Vicomte de, ii. 199 

Brain, 104 note 

Brantome, 94, 200, 257, 271 ; ii. 

II, 20, 36, 44, no, 165, 174, 

175, 212 
Bretagne, Anne de, 145, 159, 161, 

183, 195-215,225; ii. 66, 157, 

158, 159 

Marie de, 112 

Breze, Diane de, see Diane de 

Poitiers 

Louis de, 289, 293 

Peter de, 88 

Sieur de, 187 



Brigonnet, Cardinal, 210, 224, 

286-288, 302 ; ii. 149 

Catherine, 281, 288 

Jean, 199 

Brienne, Comte de, ii. 196 

Brissac, Jeanne de, ii. 124 

Broglie, Due de, 238 

Brosse, Pierre de la, 198 

Brunhilda, 29 

Brunyer, Albert, ii. 217 

Bruyn, Messire, ii. 246 

Buckingham, ii. 194 

Buflfon, ii. 24 

Bullant, Jean, ii. 76 and note, 

228 
Burgundians, 74 
Burgundy, 37, 52, 124, 135, 175 ; 

ii. 58, 142 
Charles, Duke of, 90, 175 

note ; ii. 42 

Philip of, ii. 232 

Bury, 125 

Cabochiens, 74 
Cadillac, ii. 196 
Caesar, ii. 55 and note 
Csesarodunum, 34, 35, 39 
Cain, 57 

Calahorra, Bishop of, 93 
Calais, 87, 88, 303 ; ii. 99 
Calvin, 213, 250, 263, 269; ii. 

82, 232 
Calvinists, ii. 81-104 
Camail, Le, Order of, 140 
Cambrai, League of, 232 
Cambresis, ii. 124 
Candes, 24, 34, loi note, 215 
Canterbury, 53, 68 
Capefigue, M., ii. 42 note, 45 



Snd> 



ex 



301 



Capello, 248 
Capet, 37, 44 
Cappadocia, 115 no(e 
Capponi, 208 
Capua, 210 
Carcassonne, ii. 132 
Carlotta of Naples, ii. 150 
Carlyle, 85 

Carte, Chateau de la, 58 
Castelnau, 79 

De, ii. 84-89 

Cavalli, Marino dei, 294; ii. 248 

Caxton, 84 

Caylus, ii. 189 

Caynon, 57 

Cazache, Jean Bernardin, 181 

Ce, Fonts de, 54 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 265, 274; ii. 

76 
Cerberus, 62 
Cerissoles, 270 
Certosa, 125, 179 
Chabannes, Sieur de, 87, 165, 

260 
Chabot, Brion, ii. "Jl, 72 
Chalais, ii. 217 
Chalosse, Baron de Castdnau, 

ii. 96 
Chalus, 67 and note 
Chambord, 23, 24, 31, 198, 221, 

246, 270, 283 ; ii. 26, 75, 201, 

205-224, 237, 238 

Comte de, ii. 221 

Chambourg, 152; ii. 21 ^ note 
Champagne, ii. 213 
Champfleury, M., ii. 53 
Chantelles, 187 
Charlemagne, 38 
Tour de, 36 



Charles, father of Louis XII., loi, 

102 and note, 103 and note 

: the Simple, 38, 39 

V. (Emperor), 248-250, 262 

VI., 126, 129 

VII., 28, 75-88, 104, 118 

VIII., 71, 91, 123, 125, 144, 

145, 176, 179, 200-212, 223; 

ii. 52-54, 65 
IX., 113; ii. 18, 41, 108, 

172, 215, 232, 249 

X., ii. 239 

Chartier, Alain, 137 
Chartres, 35, 53 note ; ii. 181 
Chastelet, ii. 124 
Chataigneraie, 299, 300 
Chateaubriand, 167 
Chateaubriand, Franjoise de, 264 
Chatillon, 151 
Chatillons, ii. 87, 170 
Chaucer, 125 
Chaumont, 24, 32, 53, 67, 163, 

198, 219-241, 286; ii. 15, 51, 

238, 245 
Chenonceaux, 24, 26, 32, 65, 96, 

198, 238, 279-305; ii. 11-27, 

46, 57. 97. 136, 165, 173, 202 

note, 232 
Cher, 24, 46, 58, 117, 151, 305; 

ii. 241, 252 
Chevalier, Abbe, ii. 55 
Cheverny, 24; ii. 182, 238, 240 
Chevreuse, Madame de, ii. 241 
Chicot, ii. 188 note 
Chinon, 24, 34 note, 40, 47, 48, 

51. 53. 54. 55-98. 108, 109, 

123, 154, 173, 198, 204; ii. 18, 

57, 132, 149 
Choinet, Pierre, ii. 63 



302 



Snd. 



ex 



Chouzy, 219 

Christ Church, Oxford, 155 note, 
178 note 

Cicero, 208 

Cimetiere des Rois, no 

Cinq Mars, 24, 32, 119, 195, 214, 
222; ii. 217, 238, 245 

Pile de, 119; ii. 244 

Civitas Turonum, 34 

Clagny, Sieur de, ii. 77 

Clarendon, Constitutions of, 52 

Claude, Queen, daughter of Anne 
de Bretagne, and wife of Fran- 
cis I., 232, 237-246, 261; ii. 
67, 70, 112, 116-120, le^^note, 
159-162 

Saint, ii. 62 

Clement, Jacques, 96 ; ii. 32, 193, 

251 
Clement VII., 268 
Cleves, Catherine de, ii. 112, 184 

Marie de, 139 

Cloth of Gold, Field of, 254, 268 

Clothaire, 154 

Cloud, St., ii. 193 

Clouet, Fran5ois, ii. 75, 231, 248 

Clovis, 37; ii. 51, 56 

Coconnas, ii. 32, 118 note, I20 

Coeur, Jacques, 87, 158 

Le, ii. 150 note 

Cognac, ii. 69, 209 

Colbert, 215 

Coligny, Admiral, 303 ; ii. 33, 39, 

46, 82-102, 107, 115-118, 170, 

175 and note, 190, 232 

Gaspard de, ii. 175 note 

Cologne, 37 

Colombieres, 67 

Columbe, Michel, 124; ii. 248 



Comestor, Pierre, ii. 144 

Commanderie, 73 

Commines, Philippe de, 89-91, 

123, 147, 168, 174, 176, 182, 

204, 206, 209, 210, 223; ii. 63 
Compostella, 37 
Concinis, ii. 195 
Conde, Prince of, 97 ; ii. 33, 82- 

102, 240 

Princess of, 97, 222 ; ii. 194 

Coni, 180 

Constance, 70 

Constant, Benjamin, 238 

Constantinople, 87, 270; ii. 240 

Contarini, 201 

Conti, Prince of, ii. 221 

Princess of, 113 

Conty, Evrard de, ii. 144 
Cordova, Bishop of, ii. 155 

Gonsalvo di, 231 

Cormery, 151, 202 note 

Abbey of, ii. 234 note 

Cormier, St. Aubin de, 145 

Corneille, ii. 165 

Correro, Giovanni, ii. 36, 44 

Cortes, 272 

Cosmo, St., ii. 255 

Cosson, Baron de, ii. 65 note, 212 

Costa, Hilarion, ii. 157 

Coudray, Fort du, 65, 79 

Couillatris, 59 

Courcelles, Pierre de, 104 

Courier, Paul Louis, 32 ; ii. 207, 

222 
Coutanciere, 104 note 
Couzi^res, ii. 242-244 
Cracow, ii. 177 
Crecy, 73 
Credit Foncier, ii. 25, 26 



cJnd, 



ex 



303 



Croix, La, ii. i6 
Croye, Ladies of, 31 
Crusades, 69, 284 
Cumberland, ii. 220 
Cyprus, 126 

Dacier, Madame, 119 
Dante, 169, 176 
Dauphine, 165 
Daurat, Jean, ii. 12 
Davila, ii. 44 
Dayelle, ii. 170 
Delorme, Marion, 31 
Denis, St., 39, 75; ii. 16, 72 

Church of, ii. 104 

Denys, St., ii. 52 

Descartes, 303 ; ii. 258 

Deschamps, Eustache, ii. 143 

Diderot, ii. 24 

Die, Saint, ii. 154 

Dijon, 123 

Dinan, ii. 122, 124 

Dino, Duchesse de, ii. 240 

Diocletian, ii. 55 

"Discontented," ii. 84 

Dolmen at Saumur, 117 

Domremy, 76 

Dorothea, Sophia, of Hanover, 

ii. 219 
Done, ii. 59 
Dreux, 130; ii. 171 
Due, Viollet le, no, 153, 283; 

ii. 134, 208, 210 
Ducos, Roger, ii. 54 
Dumas, 30, 104 note ; ii. 15 note, 

2,1 note, 45, 102, 118 note, 165, 

178 note, 216 note 
Dunois, 31, 133, 138, 142, 144; 

ii. 145 



Dupin, M. Claude, ii. 24 

Madame, ii. 23-25 

Durward, Quentin, 31, 166; ii. 
247 

EcoUEN (Edict of), 304 ; ii. 76 
Effranats, Des, ii. 189 
Elboeuf, Due d', 190 
Eleanor, wife of Henry II. of 

England, 51-71, 109 
sister of Charles V., 263, 

264 
Elias, Count of Maine, 48 
Elizabeth, Madame, ii. 223 
Queen of England, 302 ; ii. 

46, 87, 112, 177 and note 
Enclos, Mademoiselle de 1', ii. 

233 

Encyclopaedists, ii. 24 
Enghien, Mademoiselle d', ii. 23 
England, 49, 50, 69, in, 124 

note, 126, 144, 302; ii. 34, 87, 

142, 207 

Henrietta of, ii. 233 

Entragues, 230; ii. 180 
Epernon, D', ii. 179 
"Escadron volant," 29; ii. 13, 

42 and note, 88, 108 
Escar, D', 188 
Essarts, Seigneur des, i. 169 
Este, Anne d', ii. 98, 184 

Beatrice d', 179, 180 

Estienne, 263 ; ii. 13, 57 
Estoile, D', Pierre, ii. 19, 20, 180 
Estrees, Diane d', ii. 20 
Gabrielle d', 30 ; ii. 20, 22, 

126, 194, 215 
Etable, Lefebvre d', 273 
Etampes, Duchesse d', 289 



304 



cJndi 



ex 



Eu, Count d', 138 

Eudes II., 40, 196 

Eustace, 51 

Eustache, St., 154 

Evelyn, 219 note ; ii. 52, 103, 

197. 199, 254, 255 
Evrault, 112 
Exeter College Chapel, ii. 53 

note 

Fabre, M. Joseph, 83 

Falaise, 71 

Faronelle, 118 

Fayette, Madame de la, 114 

Felix, 31, 58 

Fere, La, ii. 124 

Ferme, La, ii. 23 

Fernel, ii. 12 

Ferrara, 145 

Duke of, 179 

Ferrieres, ii. 89 

Fevre, Robert le, ii. 239 

Fiesque, Comtesse de, ii. 168 

Filarete, Antonio, 124 note 

Fizes, Simon de, ii. 109 

Fleix, ii. 125 

Fleming, Miss, 302 ; ii. 34 

Fleur, De Maison, ii. 35 and 

note 
Fleuranges, 236, 252 note; ii. 71, 

72, 153 
Florence, 147, 209, 210; ii. 75 
Florio, Francesco, 124 note 
Foix, Gaston de, 234, 235, 260; 

ii. 72 

Germaine de, ii. 1 50 

Fontaine, La, ii. 134 
Fontainebleau, 25 ; ii. 74, 76, 

228 



Fontenoy, ii. 219, 220 
Fontevrault, 23, 24, 49, 69, 71 

102-119, 258 
Force, Caumont de la, ii. 120 
Forges, Les, 89 
Fornova, 210 
Fosseuse, La, ii. 125, 169 
Fouquet, Surintendant, 215, 286; 

ii. 102 
Jean, 124; ii. 75 and note, 

248 
Francis I., 112, 124, 148, 160, 

186-191, 245-275; ii. 26, 206, 

208, 211, 232 

XL ii. 31-47, 81-104, 167 

Franks, 37 

Fredegonde, 29 

Frederick, Prince Palatine, 264 

Freundsberg, 264 

Froissart, 128 note ; ii. 143 

Fronde, 25 ; ii. 240, 241 

Fulk the Good, 39, 44 

Nerra (Black Falcon), 45, 

47. 49. 52, 54. 66, 67, 116, 

155. 173. 196. 220; ii. 240 

Rechin, 48, 173 

the Red, 43 

Fuller, Thomas, 84 

Gaillard Chateau, 69, 71 
Galitzin, Prince, ii. 21 
Gambetta, Leon, ii. 257 
Gandia, Duke of, 92 
Gargantua, 113 
Garigliano, 231 

Gatien, St., 34, 35, 39; ii. 246 
Gelais, Saint, 180, 183 ; ii. 147, 

166 
Gelduin, 220 



Sndi 



ex 



305 



Genep, i66 
Genoa, 142 
Geoffrey, 48, 50, 51, 66 

Greygown, 44, 154 

George, St., 63 

Germain, St., I'Auxerrois, ii. 118 

en Laye, 299, 302 ; ii. 34 

Gerson, 170 

Gie, Marechal de, 145, 203, 205, 

210, 211, 234; ii. 67-70 
Gilles, Nicole, ii. 63 
Giustiniano, Marino, ii. 40 
Gondi, ii. 44 
Gondy, Baptiste, 300 
Gonzague, Marie de, 222 
Good Hope, Cape of, 271 
Goujon, Jean, 238; ii. 15, 77, 

120, 137 and note, 138, 228 
Grammont, Seigneur de, 229 
Granada, 205 
Grandchamp, M., ii. 175 
Grandet, Eugenie, 119 
Gregory (of Tours), 37 ; ii. 56 
Greniers de Cesar, ii. 55 
Greve, St. Jean en, ii. 84 
Groslot, ii. 170 
Guast, Du, ii. 112 and note 
Guesclin, Du, 73, 203, 282, 283 
Guicciardini, 91 
Guienne, 87 ; ii. 73 
Guiscard, Robert, 238 
Guise, 96 
Cardinal de, ii. 32, ^■^f 83- 

102 

Duchesse de, 113 

Fran9ois de, ii. 32, 33 

Henri de, 214; ii. 32, 112, 

178, 179 note, 181-190 
' Tour de, 39 

Vol. II.— 20 



Gutenberg, ii. 16 
Guthrie, 85 

Halde, Du, ii. 186 
Hardouin, Bishop of Tours, 154 
Harley, ii. 32 
Haton, Claude, ii. 166 
Hautefort, Mademoiselle de, ii. 

215 and note 
Henry I., King of France, 48 
II., 238, 251, 275, 289, 292, 

296, 297 and note, 300-305 ; 

ii. 11-27, 82, 232 
III., 65, 96; ii. 107, 176- 

193, 232, 249, 250 
IV., 25, 96, 222 ; ii. 21, 39, 

107, 114, 193, 194, 215, 251 
Henry I. of England, 48, 50 
II. of England, 39, 40, 45, 

46, 48, 50, 66-69, 108, 109, 

III, 220 

III. of England, 1 10 

v., Emperor, 49 

V. of England, 75, 138 

VI. of England, 75 

VIII., 237, 254 

Heptameron, 262, 270; ii. 114 

note 
Hericault, M., 136 note, 137 
Hermite, Tristan 1', 1 74 ; ii. 247 
Herve, 36 

Hildebert, Archbishop, 49 
Hohenstaufen, 236 
Holbein, 274 
Holinshed, 84 note 
Holland, ii. 234 
Holy Land, 106 
Hopital, De 1', ii. 32, 39, 120 
Horloge, Tour de 1', 36, 64 



306 



Sfid^ 



ex 



Hubert, St., Chapel of, ii. 52 
Hugo, Victor, 30, 32 ; ii. 165, 

216 
Hugon, Tour du roi, 39 
Huguenots, 97; ii. 81-104, 253- 

256 
Hundred Years' War, 27, 73 
Huy, ii. 122 

Indre, 24, 46, 58, 66, loi, 

151 
Ingelger, 39, 43 
Isabel, of Angouleme, 70, 1 10 

of Bavaria, 29 

Isabella, daughter of John the 

Good, 125 
Isabella, Princess, 134 
Ivry, ii. 251 

Jacquerie, 169 

James, Henry, 103 note ; ii. 52 
note, 208, 222 

King of Scotland, ii. 33 

V. of Scotland, ii. 163 

Jarnac, 299 

Jean Sans Peur, 132, 139 

Jeanne of France, 92, 144, 224, 

225 
Jehan, Jacques, 128 
Jerusalem, 37, 47, 49, 67, 236 
Jodelle, Estienne, ii. 32, 165 
John the Good, King of France, 

125 
Lackland (King of Eng- 
land), 66, 68, no, 164 
Joinville, Prince de, ii. 252 
Jovius, Paulus, 94 note, 1 77 note, 

185 note; ii. 150 
Joyeuse, Due de, ii. 21, 179 



Julian, Emperor, 36 
Julien, St., 47 

Kant, 27 

Kirkcudbright, 88 
Knights Templars, 72, 73 
Knights of St. John, 73 
Konigsmarck, Aurora von, ii. 

219 
Count Philip von, ii. 219 

Lafosse, M. Touchard, 98 

Lalain, Comte de, ii. 123 

Lamarck, 296 

Lameire, 199 

Lancaster, 88 

Lancerre, Comte de, ii. 89 

Landor, 85 ; ii. 258 

Langeais, 24, 34, 46, 47, 62, 

98, 119, 151, 193-215, 286, ii. 

26, 132 

Duchesse de, 31 

Larchant, Sieur de, ii. 188 
Lautrec, 235, 252, 254, 255, 266, 

286 
Laval, Guy de, 164 
League, Catholic, 96 ; ii. 47, 1 78 
Lecouvreur, Adrienne, ii. 219 
Leczinski, Stanislas, ii. 211, 218 
Legrand, Jacques, 130 
Leran, M. de, ii. 118 
Lerins, Comte de, ii. 151 
Lescot, Pierre, ii. 137 and note, 

228 
Letellier, Jean Baptiste, ii. 253 
Lidorius, 35 
Liege, ii. 121-123 

Bishop of, ii. 123 

Lignieres, Captain, ii. 89 



cJnd^ 



ex 



307 



Ligny, Seigneur de, 182, 183 
Lippomano, Girolamo, ii. 21, 

103, 212, 250 
Lizet, 259 
Loches, 24, 26, 32, 43, 45, 46, 

69, 86, 91, 95, 119, 151-191, 

223, 259 ; ii. 104, 195, 241 
Loignac, ii. 189 
Loir et Cher, 23 
Loire, Charite sur, ii. 19 
Lombardy, 126 
London, Tower of, 136, 138 
Longchamps, ii. 210 
Longueville, Duchesse de, 200, 

241 
Lorges, Comte de, ii. 14 
Lorme, Marion de, ii. 216 
Lorraine, Louise de, ii. 19-22 
Loudun, 46 
Louis, son of Charlemagne, 38 

Dauphin, 109; ii. 127 

VL, 48 

XL, 25, 29, 51, 88-91, 104, 

123, 143, 144, 174, 205, 223; 

ii. 57, 61, 146 
XIL, 91-95. 112, 123, 143, 

164-170, 181-184, 223-241; 

ii. 74, 146, 213 

XIII., ii. 194, 215, 244 

XIV., 25, 65; ii. 23, 199, 

211, 218, 240 

XVI., 118 

St., 71, 164, 198, 258 noie ; 

ii. II 
Louise, wife of Henry III., 

96 
Louvre, 72, iii 
Loyal Servitor, 231, 234, 236, 

261 



Luc, St., ii. 124 

Lucca, 107 

Lucien, 31 

Lufon, Bishop of, 229 

Luitgard, 38 

Lulli, ii. 218 

Lusignan, Geoffrey of, 71 

Guy of, 66 

Hugues de, no 

Luther, 270 
Luynes, 24, 32, 195 

Due de, ii. 194, 195, 244 

Lyons, 37, 183, 187 

Mabel, Duchess, 179 
Mabille, M., 196 
Macabre, Danse, 75 
Mache, Saint, 202 
Machiavelli, 91, 206, 231 
Madeleine, La, 154 
Madrid, 260, 262 
Maille, ii. 244 
Maine, 37, 46, 47, 48, 50 
Maine et Loire, 23 

Prefect of, in 

Maintenon, Madame de, 30, 114, 

218, 233 
Malifaud, M., 108 
Malines, Saint, ii. 189 
Malo, St., Bishop of, 211 
Mans, Le, 35 note, 37, 47, 48, 

67, 128 and note ; ii. 244 
Mansard, ii. 133, 141, 238 
Marche, Hugh de la, 71 

Olivier de la, 165 note 

Robert de la, ii. 71 

Margaret of Flanders, 234 

France, 52 

Scotland, 165 



308 



Sndi 



ex 



Margot, La Reine, see Valois, 

Marguerite de 
Maria Galeazzo, 178 

Theresa, ii. 220 

Marignano, 236, 252, 258 ; ii. 

74. 240 
Marigny, 291 
Marmoutier, 36 ; ii. 246, 247 

Jean de, 43 ; ii. 55 note 

Marot, Clement, 104, 250 ; ii. 94 
Marques, Jean, 282 

Pierre, 282 

Marseilles, 93 

Marteau, Chapelle, ii. 185 

Martel, Charles, ^t,> S^, 58 

Geoffrey, 47, 48, 104, 116 

Martin, St., and Abbey of, ^^, 

36, 38, 39, 69, 80, 102, 196 ; 

ii. 246, 254 
Matilda of Anjou, 47, 49, 51 
Maugiron, ii. 180 
Maurepas, Comte de, ii. 220 
Maurevel, ii. 115 
Maurice, St., 35 
Maximilian, Emperor, 145, 179, 

202, 234 
Mayence, 37 
Mayenne, 44 

Due de, 96; ii. 251 

Mazarin, ii. 23, 199 

Medicis, Catherine de, 29, 238, 

289, 296; ii. 13, 24, 31-47. 

81-125, 163-190, 231, 232, 

250 

Cosmo de, 268 ; ii. 238 

' Jean de, 264 

■■ Marie de, ii. 194-197, 243, 

244 
. Piero de, 208 



Megrin, St., ii. 180 

Mehun sur Yevre, 88 

Mercoeur, Duchesse de, ii. 22 

Meschinot, 137 

Metz, 47; ii. 12 note, 99, 195 

Meudon, Cure de, 61 

Mexme, St., 63 

Mezeray, ii. 188 note, 189, 190 

note 
Mezieres, Philippe de, 125 
Michael, St., 83 

Collar of, ii. 150 

Order of, ii. 58 

Michel, Mont St., 83, 152; ii. 

58, 132 
Michelet, 26, 257 ; ii. 34 
Michiel, Giovanni, ii. 43, 47 
Milan, 145, 146, 178-182, 235, 

254. 255 
Milieu, Chateau du, 64, 85 
Minard, Antoine, ii. 84 
Minimes, Monastere des, 261 
Mire, 58 

Mirebeau, 46, 51, 71 
Molay, Jacques, 72 
Mole, La, ii. 120 
Moliere, ii. 61, 165, 218 
Monaco, Prince of, ii. 153 note 
Montaigne, 91 note, 213 ; ii. 12, 

32 
Montalais, ii. 199 
Montauban, Admiral de, 204 

Bishop of, 222 

Montbazon, 24, 46, 47, 151 
Duchesse de, 152, 163, 175; 

ii. 242, 243 

Duke of, ii. 195, 243 

Montespan, Madame de, ii. 218 
Montesquieu, ii. 24 



c7fic/( 



ex 



309 



Montezuma, 249 

Montfery, ii. 189 

Montfrault, ii. 206 

Montholon, ii. 182 

Montlieu, 258 

Montluc, 270, 273 

Montmorency, 250, 269 

Anne de, 289 ; ii. 32, 71, 

232 
Montpensier, ii. 119 
Mademoiselle de, 113, 197, 

199, 217, 233, 240 
Montresor, 46 

Due de, ii. 241 

Montrichard, 46, 163 ; ii. 241 
Montsoreau, Mademoiselle de, 

51, 104, 105 ; ii. 121 

I.a Dame de, ii. 180 

Moro, II, see Sforza, Ludovico 
Mortara, 182 

Mortemart, Seigneur de, 138 
Moulin, Tour du, 65 
Moulins, 165, 187 

Chateau de, ii. 22 

Muret, 98; ii. 12 

Namur, ii. 123 
Nan^ay, M. de, ii. 118, 119 
Nangis, Marquis de, ii. 216 
Nantes, 37 ; ii. 68, 86 

Edict of, ii. 252, 253 

Naples, 95, 145, 146, 210 
Narbonese, ^^ 
Narbonne, 103 fzote, 125 
Navarre, Antoine of, ii. 32 
Henry of, see Henry IV. of 

France 
■ Queen of, 261-263, 272- 

274 



Nemours, 167 

Due de, see Gie, de 

Nepveu, Pierre le, 283 ; ii. 209, 

227 
Nerac, 263, 273; ii. 125, 170 
Neuilly, De, ii. 185 
Nevers, Madame de, ii. 108 
Nini, 238 
Noirmoutier, Fran9ois, Marquis 

de, ii. 109 
Noizay, ii. 89 
Nominalists, 168 
Nonnains, Pont aux, 54 noie, 

108 
Novara, 146, 147, 182, 183, 210, 

223, 229, 235 
Nuncio, Papal, ii. 95 

Odo, 33, 44 

Count of Blois, 45, 46; ii. 57 

Odos, Castle of, 275 

Olivier, Chancellor, ii. 90-93 

Onzain, 219 

Or, Chateau de I'lle d', 117, 118 

Orleans, 31, 35 note, 74; ii. 76, 

81, 197 

Three Dukes of, 123-148 

Orleans, Charles d', 133-148 
Gaston d', brother of Louis 

XIV., ii. 22, 133, 196, 197, 

200, 217, 241 
Louis d', father of Charles 

d', 126 

Madeleine d', 112 

Maid of, see d'Arc, Jeanne 

Pucelle d', see d'Arc, Jeanne 

Orme, Philibert de 1', 221, 292 ; 

ii. 15 
Ostia, 93 



310 



Snd^ 



ex 



Pactius. Thomas, 43 
Palice, La, 233 
Palissy, Bernard, ii. 20 
Pantagruel, 57, 62 
Pardeillan, Baron de, ii. 91 
Pare, Ambroise, ii. 113 
Paris, 37, 39, 74, 75, no, 123, 

289; ii. 12, 77 
Pasithee, ii. no 
Patelin, ii. 60 and note 
Pattison, Mrs. Mark, 124, 197, 

283; ii. 135, 211, 230 
Paul v., ii. 172 
Pavia, 126, 179, 186, 187, 249; 

ii. 72 
Pelisson, ii. 207 
Pelouze, M., ii. 25 
Pepin, 38 
Peronne, 90, 175 
Perreal, Jean, 237 note 
Petit, Maitre Jean, 133 

Mr., Ill, 154, 283 

Petrarca, Francesco, 125, 169 
Philip I., 48 

III., 198 

of France (Auguste), 67- 

69, 71, 104 
Philippe, Louis, in 
Pibrac, Chancellor, ii. 125 
Piennes, Mademoiselle de, ii. 169 
Piefort, Pierre, 304 note 
Pierrefonds, Castle of, ii. 132 
Pindar, ii. 240 
Pintoricchio, ii. 152 
Pisa, 209, 230 
Pisseleu, Anne de, 264 
Pizarro, 272 
Place, Pierre de la, 304 note 



Plantagenets, 40, 46, 49, 71, 98, 

loi. III ; ii. 258 
Plato, 114 
Plessis-lez-Tours, 26, 31, 89, 

175, 199, 289; ii. 19, 58, 59, 

109, 247, 255 
Poitiers, t,'^, 37 note, 73, 107, 

123, 238 ; ii. 172, 244 
Diane de, 29, 187-189, 

270, 279-305; ii. 11-27 

Jean de, 187 

Poitou, 54, 102, 165 
Poltrot, ii. 32, 98, 171 
Pompadour, De, Bishop of Peri- 

gueux, 186 note 
Pontbrillant, 190 
Pontlevoy, ii. 57 
Pontremulo, 178 note 
Porchier, Estienne, 143 note 
Porthos, ii. 201 
Poucher, Jean, 291 
Poyet, 259 

Pragmatic Sanction, 166 
Praguerie, 165, 220 
Prat, Du, 186, 224, 247, 253, 

256, 267, 286 
Prie, Emard de, 187 
Primaticcio, 284 ; ii. 17 and 

note, 76, 209, 227, 228 
Prince, Black, ii. 258 
Protestants, 268-270, 304 note, 

305 
Provence, 33 
Puits-Herbaut, Gabriel de, 113 

note 
Puy, 187 

Bishop of, 185 

Pyrenees, 33 



(ynd> 



ex 



311 



QuENTiN, St., 303 
Quesnel, Maitre, ii. 137, 279 
Quicherat, 81 note, 85 
Quixote, Don, adventures of, ii. 
239 

Rabelais, 30-32, 59, 60, 206, 
212-214, 263, 273 ; ii. 59, 257, 
258 

Racine, 114 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, ii. 258 

Ramorantin, ii. 240, 241 

Ramus, M., ii. 12, 120 

Ranee, Armand de, ii. 242, 245 
and note 

Raoul, ii. 133 

Raunay, Baron de, ii. 96 and note 

Ravaillac, ii. 32, 194 

Ravenna, 234, 258 ; ii. 72 

Ray, M. le, 238 

Reformation, 206, 303 

Regent, English, ill 

Regnier, 169 

Reignac, 152 

Rembrandt, 303 

Remy, Jeanne de St., 303 

Renaissance, 87, 136, 148, 206, 
284 ; ii. 227-230 

Renard, Matthieu, 96 

Renaudie, Godefroy de Barry de 
la, ii. 85-104 

Rene, 88 

Rene, Queen's Florentine per- 
fumer, ii. 113, 176 

Retz, De, 190; ii. 216, 241, 
242, 244, 24s 

Revol, ii. 182, 188 

Rheims, 81 

• Archbishop of, ii. 146 



Ribeirac, ii. 180 

Richard Coeur de Lion, 66, 67, 

69, 70 and note, 109, 164, 247 
Richelieu, 25, 97, 104, 114, 190, 

253; ii. 22, 194, 196, 216, 

245 

town of, ii. 245 

Richemont, Count of, 76, 87 
Ridel, Hugues, ii. 227 note 
Ris, Michael, 229 
Robbia, Girolamo della, ii. 210 
Robert of Gloucester, 51 
Robertet, Florimond, 125, 143, 

291 ; ii. 201 
Rocca, 178 
Rochechouart, 190 

Marie M. G. de, 114 

Rochecorbon, 62, 67, 115, 119, 

199, 290 ; ii. 245, 246 
Rochefort, 97 

Rochefoucauld, De la, ii. 119 
Rochelle, La, 138; ii. 251 
Rochester, 162 
Roger the Devil, 46 
Rohan, Cardinal de, 93, 303 

Duke of, ii. 195 

Marie de, ii. 241 

Mademoiselle de, ii. 20 

Vicomte de, ii. 216 

Roissy, De, ii. 194, 195 

Romagna, 92 

Rome, 35, 37, 123, 210; ii, 75 

Romorantin, ii. 209 

Ronsard, 61, g2 ; ii. 12, 32, 35, 

37, no, 164, 240, 255 
Rosny, Sieur de, ii. 22 
Rosso, Giovanni Battista, ii. 76 
Rouen, 81, 109 
Rousseau, J. J-, 32 ; ii. 24 



312 



Sndi 



ex 



Roux, Le, ii. 228 

Rovere, Cardinal de la, 175, 232 

(Pope) 
Rubens, ii. 194, 196 
Ruccelai, Abbe, ii. 195 
Ruggieri, ii. 42 
Russy, Forest of, ii. 240 
Ruze, ii. 182 

Sainte Chapelle, ii. 53 note 

Salle, La, ii. 188 

Sand, Georges, 31 ; ii. 220 note 

Sarthe, 44 

Saumur, 23, 46, 47, 54, 67, 104 

note, 113, 115, 116 
Saussaye, M. de la, ii. 209, 212 
Sauves, Madame de, ii. 20, 31, 

186, 187 
Sauveur, St., Church of, ii. 47, 

133 
Savoie, Charlotte de, 205 
Louise de, 29, 58, 112, 186, 

247, 251, 253, 255-260, 267, 

287 ; ii. 72-74, 240 
Savonarola, 206, 208, 212 
Savoy, Bastard of, 260 
Saxe, Marshal, ii. 211, 219 
Saxony, Elector of, Augustus the 

Strong, ii. 219 
Scarron, 30 
Scheldt, ii. 220 
Schomberg, ii. 180 
Scipio, 183 

Scott, Sir Walter, 166, 167 
Scudery, Mademoiselle de, ii. 207 
Semblan9ay, Charlotte de Beaune, 

ii. 108 
Jacques de Beaune, 58, 255- 

257, 286, 291 ; ii. 70, 108 



Severus, Sulpicius, ii. 56 
Seyssel, Claude de, ii. 63 
Sforza, Francesco, 141, 142 

Ludovico, 146, 176, 179, 

180-184, 206, 209, 229 ; ii, 

152 
Shakespeare, 83, 84, 303 
Sicily, Queen of, 76, no, 118 
Siegfried, Monsieur, 199, 214 
Sienna, Siege of, 302 note 
Simonetta, Cecco, 178 
Simonides, ii. 240 
Smalkald, League of, 268 
Socrates, 83 
Soliman, 269 
Sologne, ii. 201 
Solomon, Song of, 104 
Sophia, Dorothea, ii. 219 
Sorbonne, 304 
Sorel, Agnes, 26, 29, 86, 87, 

155-159, 164, 273, 293 
Southey, 83, 85 
Spencer, Herbert, 27 
Spinosa, 303 
Stael, Madame de, 238 
Statues of the Plantagenet Kings, 

109-112 
Stephen of Blois, Count of Bou- 
logne, 45, 50 
Stuart, Esme, 207 note 
Marie, 26, 30, 113, 302; 

ii. 18, 31-47, 81, 95, 96, 167, 

180, 232 
Suffolk, Duke of, 118, 140 
Sulpice, Sieur de Saint, ii. 180 
Suriano, Michele, ii. 43 
Swiss, 165 
Symphorien, St., 36; ii. 25lf 

257 



Sndi 



ex 



313 



Talbot, 87 

Taro, 211 

Tavannes, ii. 119 

Thelema, 33 ; ii. 210 

Thibault le Tricheur, ii. 142, 206 

Thier, Jean du, ii. 240 

Thou, De, 32; ii. 217, 245 

Anne de, ii. 238 

Thouet, 117 

Throckmorton, ii. 177 note 
Tinchebray, 48 
Titian, ii. 239 
Torinus, 34 note 
Torquemada, 205 
Toulouse, 33 ; ii. 92 

Count Raymond of, no 

Tournon, Mademoiselle de, ii. 

122 
Tours, ii. 237-258 

Vicomte de, ii. 180 

Tractus, Armoricanus, 37 
Trappe, De la, ii. 243 
Traus, Baron de, 93 
Tremouille, La, 76, 143, 144, 

182, 183, 203, 231, 235, 260; 

ii. 148 
Trihan, William de, 68 
Trinqueau, Maitre Pierre, ii. 209 
Trivulzio, 180-182, 210, 229 
Troyes, Jean de, 175 note 
Tr uncus, 116 
Turenne, ii, 125 
Turin, 211 
Turner, ii. 258 

Urban II., Pope, 106 

Ursins, Juvenal des, 127 tiote, 

130 note, 135 
Usson, Chateau d', ii. 125 



Valentinois, Duchy of, 92, 95 

Duke of, 94 

Valery, Saint, ii. 12 
Vallier, Saint, 293 

Seigneur de, 187-190, 293 

Valliere, Louise de la, 30 ; ii. 

199, 214 
Valois, 130, 232 
Marguerite de (La Reine 

Margot) 50; ii. 22, 31, 45, 

107-127, 172-179, 214 
Vassy, ii. 98 
Vaugien, M. de, 222 
Vauguyon, La, 187 
Vecellio, Cesare, ii. 12 
Vendome, 53; ii. 11, 22 

Due de, ii. 23 

Venice, 146, 210, 291 
Vercingetorix, ii. 55 note 
Verger, Chateau of, ii. 70 
Verieres, Mademoiselle, ii. 220 

note 
Vermandois, ii. 142, 143 
Vernant, St., ii. 244 
Versailles, 25 ; ii. 23, 201 
Versigny, Nicole de, 303 
Vertus, 130 

Vesc, Etienne de, 203, 210; ii. 62 
Vespers, Sicilian, ii. 116 
Vieilleville, 299, 301; ii. 12, 14, 89 
Vienna, 24, 46, 47, 54, 57, 58, 

62, loi, 104, 108, 151 
Vigelli, 287 
Vignemont, 163 
Vigny, De, 32, 116, 222, 245 
Villeneuve, Rene, Comte de, ii. 25 
Villeroi, ii 182 
Villon, Francois, 60, 79, 142, 

169; ii. 59, 144 



314 



Snd> 



ex 



Vincennes, 97, 199 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 208 ; ii. 74> 

75. 77, 141. 152 
Vineuil, De, ii. 240 
Visconti, Filippo Maria, 141 

Gian Galeazzo, 125-148 

Valentine, 126-148; ii. 132, 

143-145, 210 
Viscontis, 204, 207 note 
Visigoths, 37 ; ii. 51 
Vitet, ii. 177 note, 250 note 
Voltaire, 83, 167, 206; ii. 24 



Watteau, ii. 240 
Westminster Abbey, 51 
William the Aetheling, 49 

the Conqueror, 27, 47 

the Marshal, 68 

Wilson, Daniel, ii. 25 

Madame, ii. 25 

Windsor, 66 
Wingfield, 136 
Wolsey, 227 

Worcester, William of, 84 
Wordsworth, ii. 258 



Walsingham, ii. 46 
Wars of Religion, 95, 113 



York, 36, 88 

Young, Arthur, ii. 200, 207, 255 



